Skip to main content

Full text of "The ruling races of prehistoric times in India, southwestern Asia, and southern Europe"

See other formats 


Google 


This  is  a  digital  copy  of  a  book  that  was  preserved  for  generations  on  Hbrary  shelves  before  it  was  carefully  scanned  by  Google  as  part  of  a  project 

to  make  the  world's  books  discoverable  online. 

It  has  survived  long  enough  for  the  copyright  to  expire  and  the  book  to  enter  the  public  domain.  A  public  domain  book  is  one  that  was  never  subject 

to  copyright  or  whose  legal  copyright  term  has  expired.  Whether  a  book  is  in  the  public  domain  may  vary  country  to  country.  Public  domain  books 

are  our  gateways  to  the  past,  representing  a  wealth  of  history,  culture  and  knowledge  that's  often  difficult  to  discover. 

Marks,  notations  and  other  maiginalia  present  in  the  original  volume  will  appear  in  this  file  -  a  reminder  of  this  book's  long  journey  from  the 

publisher  to  a  library  and  finally  to  you. 

Usage  guidelines 

Google  is  proud  to  partner  with  libraries  to  digitize  public  domain  materials  and  make  them  widely  accessible.  Public  domain  books  belong  to  the 
public  and  we  are  merely  their  custodians.  Nevertheless,  this  work  is  expensive,  so  in  order  to  keep  providing  this  resource,  we  liave  taken  steps  to 
prevent  abuse  by  commercial  parties,  including  placing  technical  restrictions  on  automated  querying. 
We  also  ask  that  you: 

+  Make  non-commercial  use  of  the  files  We  designed  Google  Book  Search  for  use  by  individuals,  and  we  request  that  you  use  these  files  for 
personal,  non-commercial  purposes. 

+  Refrain  fivm  automated  querying  Do  not  send  automated  queries  of  any  sort  to  Google's  system:  If  you  are  conducting  research  on  machine 
translation,  optical  character  recognition  or  other  areas  where  access  to  a  large  amount  of  text  is  helpful,  please  contact  us.  We  encourage  the 
use  of  public  domain  materials  for  these  purposes  and  may  be  able  to  help. 

+  Maintain  attributionTht  GoogXt  "watermark"  you  see  on  each  file  is  essential  for  informing  people  about  this  project  and  helping  them  find 
additional  materials  through  Google  Book  Search.  Please  do  not  remove  it. 

+  Keep  it  legal  Whatever  your  use,  remember  that  you  are  responsible  for  ensuring  that  what  you  are  doing  is  legal.  Do  not  assume  that  just 
because  we  believe  a  book  is  in  the  public  domain  for  users  in  the  United  States,  that  the  work  is  also  in  the  public  domain  for  users  in  other 
countries.  Whether  a  book  is  still  in  copyright  varies  from  country  to  country,  and  we  can't  offer  guidance  on  whether  any  specific  use  of 
any  specific  book  is  allowed.  Please  do  not  assume  that  a  book's  appearance  in  Google  Book  Search  means  it  can  be  used  in  any  manner 
anywhere  in  the  world.  Copyright  infringement  liabili^  can  be  quite  severe. 

About  Google  Book  Search 

Google's  mission  is  to  organize  the  world's  information  and  to  make  it  universally  accessible  and  useful.   Google  Book  Search  helps  readers 
discover  the  world's  books  while  helping  authors  and  publishers  reach  new  audiences.  You  can  search  through  the  full  text  of  this  book  on  the  web 

at|http  :  //books  .  google  .  com/| 


THE    RULING    RACES    OF 


PREHISTORIC    TIMES 


t  i'V 


•  -? 


(M^ 


THE  RULING  RACES 


OF    PREHISTORIC    TIMES 


IN  INDIA,  SOUTH-WESTERN  ASIA 


AND  SOUTHERN   EUROPE 


Ay 

,lf  Fya  E  W I T  T 

LATE  COMMISSIONER  AT  CHOTA  NAOPORE 


4H^ 


WITH    NUMEROUS    DIAQRAMS    AND    MAPS 


ARCHIBALD   CONSTABLE   AND   COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS   TO    THE    INDIA   OFFICE 

14  PARUAMENT  STREET,  S.W. 


» 


MDCCCXCIV  •  ■• 


-  2foS/- 


S^r  *-^  ^   .* 


:    .*    '  I  ?4mburgh  :  T.  and  A.  Constable,  Printers  to  Her  Majesty 


*  «  M   »   •    «  ' 


CONTENTS        s 


.      ••  • 


.      *  PAGE 

PREFACE,  .    ]        ,      v-lxv 


ESSAY  I. . 


>. 


ESSAY  II.— 

The  Primitive  Village,  its  Origin,  Growth  into  the 
Province,  the  City,  and  the  State,  and  its  Methods 
of  Record,  .  .  .41 

ESSAY  III.— 

The  Eariy  History  of  India,  South-Western  Asia, 
Egypt,  and  Southern  Europe,  as  taught  by  that 
of  the  worship  of  the  Hindu  Soma,  the  Zend 
Haoma,  the  Assyrian  Istar,  and  the  Egyptian 
Isis,         ......       134 

ESSAY  IV.— 

Astronomical  Mj'ths,  showing,  on  the  Evidence  of 
Early  Akkadian  Astronomy,  how  the  Hittitos, 
Kusliites,   and   Ku shite-Semites   measured  tlie 

J  tfcli  •  •••••• 


330 


ESSAY  v.— 

The  History   of  the   Rule   of  the   Kushite-Semite 
Races  as  told  in  the  early  forms  of  tlie  Soma 
Festival  and  the  worship  of  tlie  Sun-god  Ra,     .       414 
1 


d 


ii  CONTENTS 

ESSAY   VI.— 

PACE 

The  first  coming  of  the  Fire-worshippiog  Hera- 
cleidae  to  Greece^  their  Conquest  of  the  Dorians 
and  Semites^  and  their  Victorious  Return  as 
Worshippers  of  the  Sun-god,  500 

INDEX, 573 


The  Maps  are  hound  in  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


ERRATA 


For  Maghadas  read  Maghadas,  passim. 
For  Dbritarashtra,  read  Dhritarashtra,  passim, 
/■or  Ramayana,  read  R&mayana,  passim, 
Elssay  I.,  p.  9, 1.  21^  for  Harshesu  rettd  Horshesu. 

„        p.  II,  1.  iSt/or  Puse  read  Dame. 

,,        p.  24, 1.  I9,ybr  Ta'az  read  Tsi*uz. 

»        P*  25,  1.  i5,y^Damu-zi  read  DMrnu-zu 
Essay  li.,  p.  46,  note  3, 1.  Z,/or  present  read  personal. 

„        p.  80,  1.  I2,y!7rfathful  taz^/ faithful. 

,,        p.  122,1.  19,  y2?r  Barsihadah  r^o^  Barhishadah. 
Essay  III.,  p.  161,  1.  i,/or&(\h  read  fourih. 

,,        p.  174,  1.  17,  insert  Ashvin&u  after  Gemini. 

,,  „       1.  19)  siriJ^e  out  Ashvinau. 

p.  180,  1.  ii,y^rthese  r^^/ their, 
p.  190,  1.  30,  y^  tuk  r^A/tak. 
p.  192,  1.  32,y^r  Kaoush-aloya  read  Kaushaloya. 
p.  192,  1.  ^^for  Maka-kosala  read  Maha-kosala. 

,,  ,,       1.  30,  y^  token  rif  a/ totem. 

„        p.  224,  1.  32, /7r  Sakadwipai  read  Sakadwipa. 

„         p.  237,  1.  21j  for  on  read  one, 

„         p.  246,  L  7,  for  Pegasge  read  Pagasae. 

»»        P*  255,  1.  24,y2?r  Vivanghvadt  r^a</ Vivanghat. 

,,        p.  262,  note  I,  for  Uruash  read  Urvashi. 

,,        p.  271,  1.  9t  for  the  read  then, 

,,  „       1.  10,  for  the  read  and, 

„         p.  274,  1.  29,  for  seventh  read  fourth. 

,,         p.  276,  1.  iStfor  Egyptian  ri^a^  Assyrian. 

,,        p.  279,  1.  31,  for  sacrifice  read  s&cnficcr, 

„        p.  284,  1.  7tfor  Malla-rarashtra  Ti^a/ Malla-rashtra. 

„         p.  286,  1.  16,  for  who  read  she, 

,,        p.  310,  1.  30,  yiw  conplexity  r^a</ complexity. 

,,         p.  314,  1.  22f  for  Hor-shehu  r^M^  Horshesu. 

ft        p.  329,  1.  25, y^r  communists  r^a^ communism. 


ft 

»t 


Hi 


iv  ERRATA 


Essay  iv.,p.  340,  1.  2S, /or  scsl,  the  mother  goddess  read  sea.     The  mother 
goddess. 

»»        p.  361,  I.  5,^r  son  read  sun. 

„        p.  362,  1.  1 1, y^  with  read  within. 
Essay  v.,  p.  417,  1.  l^^for  Arayaman  read  Aryaman. 

>f        P*  435i  !•  24,  y^  Yagflas  read  Yajfias. 

>»        P*  43^1  1.  lit  for  Paftketi  read  PaSkti. 

„        p.  447,  note  7,/tfr  Vodha  r^^/badha. 

,,        p.  461, 1.  22,y27r  Aitaryea,  r^z^  Aitareya. 

„         p.  487,  note  It  for  on  read  On. 

,,        p.  490,  note  2,  I.  23,  strike  out  that  of  and  read  as  the  God  Ram. 
Essay  vi.,  p.  506,  1.  6,y^r  Vira  readVxr^. 

If        P*  51I1  J'  iiy^'' Sarhue  r^a</Sarhul. 

,,        p.  516,  1.  '^^  for  9Kipo%  read  VKipw. 

if        P*  550*  !•  26,y^r  Gergon  read  Geryon. 

if        P*  554*  ^  23,y27r  Vahi^hta  Istish  r^od^  Vahista  Istiah. 

»»         P'  559>  !•  28,yi7r  Pasiphae  read  Pasiphase. 

,,         p.  561,  I.  3i,yi?r  Sharvasa  fTfoa^  Sharvara* 


PREFACE 

The  Essays  in  this  volume  have  been  written  to  help  those 
who,  like  myself,  are  trying  to  trace  the  paths  worn  by  the 
ruling  races  of  the  world  through  the  tangled  jungles  of 
past  time,  and  thus  to  learn  the  real  history  of  the  child- 
hood of  humanity  during  the  ages  when  national  life  began 
its  troubled  journey  towards  its  ultimate  and,  as  yet,  unseen 
goaL  They  call  especial  attention  to  the  chronological 
data  supplied  by  social  laws  and  customs,  mythic  history 
and  ritual,  and  prove  that  these  when  studied  provide 
guiding  marks  from  which  we  can  deduce,  even  in  ages 
which  have  been  hitherto  called  prehistoric,  the  order 
in  which  the  leading  epoclis  of  civilisation  succeeded  one 
another.  The  great  discoverers  who  have  distinguished  the 
Palaeolithic,  Neolithic,  and  Bronze  Ages,  and  have  brought 
before  our  eyes  vivid  pictures  of  infant  civilised  life  en- 
tombed in  the  ancient  cave  dwellings,  pile  villages,  burial- 
grounds,  and  ruined  cities  of  these  periods,  have  already 
proved  that  the  history  of  the  past,  before  national  annals 
telling  of  the  deeds  of  individual  rulers  and  leaders  of  man- 
kind began  to  be  written,  is  not  shrouded  in  impenetrable 
darkness.  But  the  local  researches  for  antiquarian  remains 
have  been  almost  entirely  confined  to  northern  countries, 
and  though  they  and  the  history  of  language  tell  us  a 
great  deal  as  to  the  ethnology,  mode  of  life,  progress  in 
agriculture,  handicrafts  and  trade  of  these  pioneer  races. 


A 


vi        RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

and  give  us  hints  as  to  their  religious  beliefs  and  social 
organisation,  they  leave  a  great  deal  unexplained,  and  make 
us  long  for  further  information,  both  as  to  the  races  whose 
relics  have  been  unearthed  and  as  to  those  Southern  people 
whose  primaeval  remains  have  only  been  very  partially  and 
incompletely  examined.  Insight  into  the  facts  of  early 
Southern  history  is  more  especially  necessary,  as  most 
geologists  believe  that  it  is  all  but  certain  that  the 
earliest  relics  of  civilised  man  will  be  found  in  countries 
immediately  adjoining  the  Southern  Hemisphere.  I  have 
added  further  proofs  in  support  of  this  conclusion,  for  I 
have  shown  that  it  was  in  the  South  that  the  village  com- 
munities were  first  founded,  whence  provincial  and  national 
government  grew.  It  was  immigrants  from  the  South  who, 
during  the  Neolithic  age,  introduced  into  Europe  the  agri- 
culture they  had  learnt  in  these  Southern  villages,  while 
North-western  Europe  was  made  uninhabitable  to  tillers  of 
the  soil  by  the  rigorous  climate  of  the  Palaeolithic  period, 
and  Southern  France  was  the  home  of  the  reindeer,  which 
can  only  live  in  almost  perpetual  frost  and  snow. 

In  looking  for  the  materials  available  to  students  of  the 
history  of  these  founders  of  society,  we  must  remember  that 
they  were,  like  their  successors,  subject  to  the  laws  governing 
human  progress.  And  these  prove  that  no  nation  has  ever 
yet  won  its  spurs  e^  a  ruler  and  leader  of  mankind  which 
has  not  demonstrated  its  right  to  lead  by  possessing 
social  laws  binding  society  together,  a  national  history  and 
a  national  religion.  The  intercourse  of  human  beings  as 
members  of  an  organised  society  can  only  have  been  made 
permanent  when  it  was  regulated  by  the  laws  laid  down  by 
the  representative  chieftains  who  led  the  people  who  were 
t/>  become  a  united  nation  out  of  the  wilderness  of  ignorance 


PREFACE  vii 

and  savage  licence,  when  the  continuity  of  social  life  was 
secured  by  a  history  of  the  growth  of  the  nation,  and  its 
disintegration  was  averted  by  the  sanctions  of  religion. 
Furthermore,  all  early  civilisation  which  has  stood  the 
test  of  time  was  intensely  conservative,  and  it  is  this 
reverence  for  the  past  which  has  ensured  the  retention 
by  conquering  races  of  local  institutions  which  have  been 
shown  by  the  prosperity  of  their  predecessors  to  be  con- 
ducive to  national  welfare.  It  is  to  this  stubborn  conser- 
vatism that  we  owe  the  conclusive  proofs  I  have  brought 
forward  in  these  Essays,  showing  that  most  of  ancient 
foundations  laid  by  the  first  builders  of  society  still  survive 
in  national  laws  and  religion  as  supports  of  the  more  modem 
superstructures  which  have  grown  out  of  the  rude  but  stable 
edifices  of  the  Past.  The  primitive  antiquity  of  these  sur- 
viving relics  of  vanished  races  is  proved  by  the  study  of 
their  social  laws  and  institutions,  religious  ritual,  and  the 
mythic  tales  which  formed  the  earliest  history ;  and  it 
is  from  them  that  we  can,  as  I  show  in  these  Essays, 
deduce  the  proofs  which  make  it  certain  that  the  village 
communities  originated  in  India,  and  that  this  communal 
system,  together  with  the  matriarchal  form  of  government 
instituted  by  their  founders,  were  brought  by  the  Indian 
cultivating  races  and  their  allies  into  Europe. 

Following  in  the  footsteps  of  Mannhardt  and  other 
scholars  who  have  accepted  his  guidance,  I  have  shown 
that  the  traditional  history  derived  from  the  earliest  forms 
of  mythic  stories  and  popular  tales,  and  from  local  customs, 
coincides  with  that  deduced  from  a  study  of  ancient  law, 
antiquarian  remains,  philology,  historical  botany  and  zoology, 
and  early  astronomy.  Also,  that  these  conclusions  as  to  the 
£Gu:ts  of  early  history  are  confirmed  by  the  ritual  of  the 


viii       RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Akkadians  and  Egyptians,  &s  recorded  on  the  tablets  and 
inscriptions  found  in  Assyria  and  Egypt,  and,  as  preserved 
by  later  historians,  by  that  of  the  Hindus  and  Persians,  as 
set  forth  in  the  Rigveda,  Brahmanas,  and  Zendavesta,  and 
still  retained  in  their  antiquated  fomis  as  popular  rites, 
and  by  that  of  the  Semites  and  Greeks. 

But  I  must  here  add  to  what  I  liave  already  said  on  the 
subject,  in  so  many  places  in  these  Essays,  a  further  defence 
of  the  accuracy  of  mythological  history,  for  it  is  upon  it 
that  a  very  large  part  of  any  intimate  knowledge  of  the  past 
must  ultimately  be  based.  And  though  many  inquirers 
regard  myths  when  rightly  used  as  valuable  guides  to  the 
historian,  yet  one  school  of  literary  critics  maintains  that 
their  claims  to  teach  genuine  history  is  not  proven,  and  that 
the  weiglit  of  evidence  is  in  favour  of  the  doctrine  that  these 
stories  were  from  the  beginning  tales  framed  to  amuse  a 
lotus-eating  population  of  lazy  savages,  and  that  they  are 
only  worth  notice  as  specimens  of  early  poetic  thought. 
When  we  consider  that  very  many,  if  not  the  majority 
of  these  tales,  liave  been  tracked  in  more  or  less  variant 
forms  from  nation  to  nation,  and  found  to  be  cherished 
as  precious  popular  possessions  almost  everywhere  through- 
out the  world,  they  are  at  once  proved  by  this  wide  diffusion 
to  date  from  an  immeasurably  remote  period,  and  it  is  im- 
possible to  believe  that  they  could  have  been  preserved 
through  these  countless  ages  and  prized  by  innumerable 
generations  of  human  beings  if  they  were  originally  merely 
stories  intended  for  amusement.  The  retention  of  the 
original  incidents  is  in  itself  a  proof  that  they  must 
once  have  been  guarded  by  a  religious  sanction  or  taboo:> 
forbidding  their  alteration,  or  else  they  would,  like  the 
stories  told  in  the  game  of  Russian  Scandal,  have  soon,  in 


PREFACE  IX 

passing  from  mouth  to  mouth,  lost  all  semblance  of  their 
original  form.  Furthermore,  when  we  remember  that  it 
was  not  only  idle,  unprogressive  savages,  but  the  pioneers 
of  civilisation  who  showed  their  appreciation  of  the  value 
of  these  tales  by  preserving  them  and  adding  to  their 
number,  we  have  only  to  picture  to  ourselves  the  mode 
of  life  of  the  first  founders  of  civilised  existence  to  see 
that  they  would  not  have  troubled  themselves  about  these 
stories,  further  than  as  a  source  of  temporary  amusement, 
if  they  were  devoid  of  practical  value.  These  men  had  to 
begin  their  work  in  the  darkness  of  ignorance  and  the 
infancy  of  untrained  faculties,  and  had  to  do  tasks  which 
would  have  fully  occupied  the  time  of  practised  experts,  and 
it  is  therefore  clearly  impossible  to  believe  that  these  busy, 
earnest,  and  practical  people  would  have  wasted  their  leisure 
time  in  framing  tales  merely  intended  for  amusement.  Their 
physical  tasks  could  have  left  no  time  for  mere  brain-work 
unconnected  with  pressing  wants.  They  had  to  clear  their 
fields  from  forests,  to  learn  the  art  of  tracking,  trapping, 
snaring,  killing,  and  hunting  the  game  wliich  destroyed  their 
crops,  and  which,  with  the  fish  they  caught,  added  to  their 
supplies  of  food ;  to  make  the  first  rude  tools  of  stone  and 
wood,  to  build  houses,  organise  social  life  in  their  villages, 
unite  allied  villages  into  provinces,  and  provinces  into  larger 
confederations;  to  learn  by  experiments  the  rudiments  of 
agriculture,  how  to  turn  wild  grasses,  vetches,  and  jungle 
roots,  the  parents  of  rice,  millets,  cereal,  and  root  crops, 
into  materials  for  food  always  available;  to  ascertain  the 
times  and  seasons  for  sowing,  planting,  and  reaping  their 
produce,  and  how  to  cultivate  fruit- trees.  They  had  to 
find  out  the  best  methods  of  using  the  fibres  of  the  fibrous 
plants,  of  which  the  flax  grown  in  the  Neolithic  villages  is 


i 


X        RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

a  specimen ;  to  invent  the  art  of  spinning  these  vegetable 
fibres  into  thread  and  weaving  them  into  linen,  an  art  which 
marked  the  union  of  the  pastoral  and  agricultural  races,  for 
vegetable  cloth  was  an  imitation  of  the  woollen  materials 
made  by  the  pastoral  tribes  from  goat  and  camel  hair 
and  sheep  wooL  They  had  to.  find  out  how  to  irrigate 
the  dry  soils  of  Northern  India  and  Central  Asia  by  water 
raised  from  rivers,  by  water-channels  and  wells,  establish 
trade  and  barter  by  interchanging  the  products  of  agri- 
cultural and  pastoral  tribes,  found  markets  and  trade  routes, 
discover  how  to  build  boats,  and  to  use  rivers  for  the  rapid 
transport  of  their  produce.  When  all  these  tasks  were  done 
their  labours  were  added  to  by  the  greatly  increased  activity 
of  trade  caused  by  the  discovery,  by  the  mining  tribes  of  the 
North  of  Asia  Minor  and  Cyprus,  of  the  ores  of  metals,  the 
methods  of  extracting  metals  from  the  ores,  and  of  working 
them  when  extractetl. 

These  people  found  their  relaxation  not  in  telling  idle 
and  amusing  stories,  except  as  interludes,  such  as  most 
people  who  are  worth  their  salt  delight  in,  but  in  hunting, 
social  intercourse,  and  dances,  which,  as  I  show  in  the  history 
of  the  matriarchal  customs,  were  used  as  a  means  of  cement- 
ing alliances  between  confederated  villages,  and  in  the  rudi- 
mentary scenic  ceremonies  connected  with  the  propitiation 
of  the  parent  gods  of  their  own  villages  and  the  driving 
away  of  the  hostile  and  malignant  powers  who  brought 
storms,  fires,  floods,  and  pestilences. 

Whence  then,  it  will  be  asked,  did  these  elaborate  mythic 
tales  arise  ?  The  answer,  as  I  show  fully  in  the  Essays,  will 
be  clear  to  those  who  realise  the  practical  earnestness  of 
these  pioneer  races.  They  meant  that  the  work  which  had 
cost  them  so  much  trouble  should  last  and  bear  fruit  in  new 


PREFACE  xi 

improvements,  and,  therefore,  they  did  not  content  them- 
selves with  securing  present  comfort,  but  provided  for  the 
future  prosperity  of  their  children.    As  the  Indian  Dravidians 
still  do,  they  looked  carefully  after  their  education,  and 
thought  that  one  of  the  most  important  tasks  they  had  to 
fulfil  was  that  of  teaching  the  knowledge  they  had  acquired 
to  the  young  of  both  sexes.     In  every  village,  as  I  have 
shown  in  Essay  ui.,  the  rising  generation  was  trained  by 
their  mothers  and  maternal   uncles,  and  it  was  from  the 
teaching  instincts  thus  developed  that  the  folk-tale,  and  the 
national  proverbs,  which  are  as  ubiquitous  as  the  folk-tale, 
originated.    An  analysis  of  the  earliest  of  these  stories,  which 
do  not  profess  to  be  historical,  will  show  that  almost  all  of 
them  are  connected  with  the  explanation  of  natural  pheno- 
mena, and  that  they  generally  are  the  product  of  the  brains 
of  agricultural  or  hunting  races  who  had  keen  mercantile 
instincts.     For  whenever  these  stories  have  individuals  for 
their   heroes   they  almost  always   turn   on   the   idea  that 
happiness  must  follow  the  possession  of  riches.     Some  are 
too  manifestly  nature  myths,  telling  of  the  course  of  the 
year,  a  subject  of  vital  importance  to  the  farming  tribes  for 
this  ending  to  appear.     One  of  these  is  that  which  tells  how 
Proserpine,  the  daughter  of  the  barley-mother  Demeter  was 
carried  off  in  the  autumn  and  detained  six  months  in  the 
under-world  by  Hades,  and  another  is  its  complementary 
story  which,  in  the  earliest  form,  relates  how  the  god  of 
spring  who  brought  the  April  showers,  our  St.  George,  slew 
the  dragon  of  winter  which  froze  up  the  rain.     These  mani- 
festly tell   of  the  two   seasons   of  the  early  year   of  the 
Southern  races  after  it  had  been  transported  to  the  Northern 
Hemisphere,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay  ii.     This  year 
was  divided  into  two  periods  of  six  months  each,  marked  by 


xii        RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  appearance  of  the  Pleiades  above  the  horizon  at  sunset 
in  November,  the  Southern  spring,  and  their  disappearance 
beh>w  it  at  the  spring-time  of  the  North  in  April. 

Other  stories,  again,  like  that  which  tells  how  the  Sleeping 
Beauty,  the  earth,  was  kissed  into  waking  life  by  the  spring 
prince,  the  young  sun-god,  repeat  a  similar  year-story  in  less 
definite  language.  But  tlie  meaning  of  the  series  of  stories, 
which  apparently  form  the  most  numerous  group  in  the 
folk  fairy  tales,  those  telling  of  the  three  brothers,  the 
three  sisters,  and  the  three  tasks,  of  wliich  the  Cinderella 
story  and  its  variants  is  probably  the  most  widely  spread,  is 
not  so  immediately  evident.  It  can  only  be  discerned  that 
these  stories  depict  the  work  of  the  three  seasons  of  the 
mother-year  of  the  barley-growing  races,  and  the  final 
victory  of  the  youngest  season,  the  winter,  which  gives 
birth  to  future  life,  when  the  important  part  assigned  in 
old  mythic  history  to  the  year  of  three  seasons  which 
succeeded  that  of  two  is  fully  understood,  and  when  it  is 
realised  that  the  barley-growing  races  who  completed  their 
national  education  in  Asia  Minor,  invariably  traced  their 
descent  from  the  three  mother-goddesses,  the  three  seasons. 
They  depicted  this  primaeval  Triad  in  the  triangle  inscribed 
on  the  earliest  altar  to  the  mother-earth,  and  used  it  as  the 
first  visible  symbol  representing  the  parent  god,  the  author 
of  all  life.  Tliis  Triad  was  the  ancestor  of  our  dogmas  of 
the  Trinity  and  of  all  the  Triads  worshipped  by  the  Hindus, 
Akkadians,  Semites,  Egyptians,  and  Greeks.  It  is  this 
symbol  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  appears  not  only  on 
the  earth-altars  made  according  to  the  pattern  prescribed  in 
the  Indian  Brahmanas,  but  also  in  the  earliest  images  of 
Apollo  Aguieus,  the  triangular  stella?  or  truncated  cones 
which  appear  on  Phoenician  coins  as  symbols  of  the  divinity, 


PREFACE  xiii 

and  which,  we  are  told  by  the  historian  El  Masudi,  all  the 
Arabians  worshipped,^  and  in  the  similar  apsidal  towers 
erected  by  the  Kabiri  at  Hadjiarkim  in  Malta,  and  the 
*Nuraghs'  of  Sardinia,^  together  with  the  tower  of  the 
Midianites  called  Pen-u-el,  the  Face  of  God,  which  was 
destroyed  by  Gideon.*  This  symbol,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in., 
also  appears  on  the  images  of  the  mother-goddess  found  in 
the  oldest  but  one  of  the  Trojan  cities  of  the  Bronze  Age, 
and  on  tombs  in  Mesopotamia,  Cyprus,  and  the  Cyclades. 
But  earlier  still  even  than  the  triangle  is  the  sign  for  woman, 
meaning  *  the  great  mother,**  the  three-formed  goddess,  which 
appears  in  the  Akkadian  ideograph  used  at  Telloh,  and  that 
in  old  Chinese  t^^     This  is  still  used  in  India  in  even  a  less 

developed  form  as  ^  and  it  is  this  which  is  the  parent  of  the 

Trisula,  the  trident  of  the  sea  father-god  which  implants  life 
in  the  earth. 

But  the  stories  which  bring  down  to  us  the  verbal  forms 
telling  the  history  of  the  mother-year,  which  was  afterwards 
more  obscurely  symbolised  in  the  sacred  triangle  and  trisula, 
contain,  besides  the  main  incidents,  a  number  of  accessories,, 
such  as  the  animals  which  help  the  heroes  and  heroines,, 
the  magic  dresses  and  other  additions  which  can  only  be 
explained  as  giving  indications  of  the  close  alliance  of  a 
number  of  originally  alien  tribes  who  believed  in  witch- 
craft ;  and  this  points  to  the  age  of  these  additions  to  the 
original  stories  as  that  in  which  the  great  national  con- 

*  Bent,  Ruined  Cities  of  Mashonaland,  new  edition,  chaps,  iv.  and  v.  pp. 
ii6,  149,  150. 

*  Encyclopedia Britannica,  Ninth  Edit.,  Art.  *  Malta  and  Sardinia,'  vol.  xv. 
p.  341,  xxi.  p.  309. 

'  Judges  viii.  7-9. 

*  Amiaud  et  Mechinseau's  Tableau  Comparh  des  Etriturcs  Babylonienncs 
et  Assyriennesy  No.  163,  p.  65. 


xiv      RULING  KACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

federation  called  the  union  of  the  Eushika  and  the  Mashada. 
the  sons  of  the  tortoise,  and  the  fire-worshippers,  was  gathered 
round  the  mother-mountain  of  the  East. 

It  was   when   village   life  expanded  into  this  primaeval 
empire  ruled  by  the  Kushika  or  Kauravya,  the  sons  of  the 
tortoise  {kush  or  lcur)y  that  the  village  teachers,  local  priests 
and  wise  women  prophetesses,  who  had  been  guardians  of 
the  national  traditional  tales,  became  the  national  Asipu, 
the  diviners,  interpreters,  and  accredited  framers  of  verbal 
histories,  who  were  called  by  the  Hindus  Prashastri,  or  teach- 
ing priests.     They  were  trained  and  consecrated  to  the  office, 
and  were  looked  on  as  divinely  inspired  persons,  who  not 
only  retained  in  their  memories  records  of  past  events,  but 
were  also  augurs  or  foretellers  of  the  future,  who  learnt  the 
meaning  of  the  indications  given  by  the  flight  when  alive, 
and  by  the  entrails  when  dead,  of  the  mother-birds  who 
brought  their  spring  to  the  Northern  children  and  the  rains 
to  those  of  India.     They  were  the  ancestors  of  the  special 
castes  of  priestly  colleges  in  India  and  Egypt,  of  the  Magi 
of  Persia  and  Assyria,  and  of  the  Augurs  of  Rome,  who, 
besides  their  functions  as  national  historians  and  di\dners, 
were  also  organisers  of  the  national  ritual.     This  in  their 
hands,  as  I  show  in  these  Essays,  became,  like  the  national 
tales,  a  vehicle  of  historical  information,  and  it  was  in  con- 
nection with  this  branch  of  their  duties  that  they  began  to 
ittudy  astronomy  as  a  means  of  teaching  them  how  to  ascer- 
tain and  predict  the  times  when  the  seasons  changed,  and  to 
fix  the  annual  recurrence  of  the   days  appointed  for  the 
public  A'fitivaU.     They  were  the  chief  advisers  of  the  kings, 
or  rather,  m'cxind  kings  themselves,  when  the  office  of  king 
and   high  priest,  wliich  Imd   been   combined  in  the   early 
PatcHi  or  priest-kings  of  the  Euphratean  countries,  Palestine, 


PREFACE  XV 

and  Egypt,  was  divided,  and  two  kings  were  appointed,  like 
the  twin  kings  of  the  Spartans  and  the  hereditary  Rajas, 
aided  by  the  hereditary  Sena-pati  or  commanders-in-chief  of 
the  Indian  Dravidian  races,  whose  national  customs  were,  as 
I  show  in  Essay  in.,  reproduced  in  Laconia. 

The  order  of  the  succession  of  the  different  families  of 
priests  arising  out  of  the  changes  caused  by  the  elaboration 
of  religious  doctrine  is  given  in  the  three  lines  of  the  Hindu 
priests  and  the  three  families  of  the  tribe  of  Levi  in  the 
Semitic  ritual.  The  earliest  of  these  were  the  Hindu  Bhri-gu 
or  priests  of  the  mother-goddess,  the  earth,  and  the  father 
fire-god.  They  stood  at  the  basis  of  the  ritualistic  system, 
and  like  the  Jewish  Merari,  whose  name  means  *  the  bitter 
or  unhappy,**  and  who  had  charge  of  the  posts,  boards,  and 
pillars  or  foundational  supports  of  the  tabernacle.^  They 
were  the  priests  of  the  earliest  dawn  of  ritualistic  worship. 
This,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  originated  in  prayers  for  rain, 
and  the  name  *  bitter"*  given  to  the  Merari  points  to  the 
Jewish  cleansing  bunch  of  hyssop,  which  I  have  traced  as 
the  direct  descendant  of  the  rain-making  magic  wand,  the 
original  prastara.  They  became  in  Phrygian  and  Akkadian 
ritual  the  Tagaru  or  elders  of  the  Sumerians,  also  called 
Kali  or  *  the  illustrious,**  who  were  the  Galli  of  Phrygia,  the 
priests  of  the  fire-god,  and  these  were,  both  in  South-western 
Asia  and  India,  eunuch  priests.  But  Indian  ritual  tells  us  of 
a  time  when  the  Neshtri,  the  successors  of  the  consecrated 
maidens  of  Istar  and  the  village  dancers,  the  priests  of  the 
supreme  god  Tvashtar  were  not  unsexed,  while  their  associate 
the  Agnidhra,  or  priest  of  the  fire-god,  was  like  his  brethren 
elsewhere,  an  unmanned  priest ;  ^  and  the  sign  of  duality,  tva^ 

^  Gesenius,  Thesaurtts^  s.v.  'Merari;'  Numbers  iii.  36-38. 
*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  pp.  62  note  3,  63 ;  Eggeling, 
Sat,  Brdk,  iv.  4,  2,  16 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  367,  368. 


i 


xvi       RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

in  the  name  of  Tvashtar  seems  to  denote  the  age  of  liis 
supremacy  as  that  before  the  worsliip  of  the  fire-god  when 
time  was  measured  by  the  Pleiades  year  of  two  seasons. 
The  Bhri-gu  were  succeeded  by  the  Afigiras  or  oflferers  of 
burnt-offerings  (anga)^  who  were  the  Adhvaryu,  or  heads 
of  the  sacrifices  in  the  Hindu  ritual  of  the  Brahmanas  and 
the  Makkhu  or  great  ones,  the  priests  of  the  goddess  Maga 
in  that  of  the  Akkadians.  They  were  the  augurs  or  inter- 
preters of  the  messages  sent  to  her  votaries  by  the  wonder- 
working mother  of  fire  through  the  indications  of  the  sacri- 
ficial victims,  and  they  were  the  Gershom  of  the  Hebrew 
ritual,  the  eldest  son  of  Moses,  Levi,  and  Manasseh,  whose 
name  meant  the  outcasts.^  They  had  charge  of  the  cover- 
ings of  the  tabernacle,^  showing  that  they  were  priests  of 
the  God  of  Heaven,  the  god  Krishanu,  the  archer-bearer  of 
the  heavenly  bow,  the  rainbow  god  of  storms  and  showers. 

They  were  deposed  from  their  supremacy  by  the  sons  of 
Kohath,  the  prophet-priests,  the  sons  of  Aaron,  meaning  Hhe 
ark  or  chest,'  *  the  priests  of  the  god  of  the  oracle  issuing 
from  the  breast  or  *  ephod '  of  the  Almighty,  the  magic 
priestly  robe  of  office  consecrated  to  the  divine  service  after 
Gideon  had  destroyed  Pen-u-el,  the  tower  of  the  Face  of 
God,  the  triangular  symbol  of  the  worship  of  the  anthropo- 
morphic gods.*  The  supremacy  of  the  Kohathites  was  gained, 
as  I  show  in  Essays  iir.  and  v.,  by  their  alliance  with  the  sons 
of  Judah  and  Caleb,  the  dog  (Jcalb)  of  the  fire-worshippei-s. 
These  Semitic  Kohathites,  the  Armenian  Kahanai,  were 
among  the  Hindus  and  Zends,  the  Atharvans  or  Athravans, 
the  priests  of  the  heavenly  fire-god,  Atar  or  Atri,  the  devour- 

^  Gesenius,  Thesaurus  ;  Ex.  ii.  22,  vi.  i6  ;  Judges  xviii.  30. 

-  Numbers  iii.  24-26. 

•*  Gesenius,  Thesaurus^  s.v.  *  Aaron.*  ^  Judges  viii.  27,  28. 


PREFACE  xvii 

ing  (ad)  three  (tri),  the  god  of  the  year  of  three  seasons, 
the  spirit  father-god  who  became  in  later  theology  the  Nun 
or  fish-god  of  the  Akkadians,  Jews,  and  Egyptians,  who  im- 
pregnated the  year  of  three  seasons  with  life.  It  was  they 
who  were  the  Ho-tar  or  pourers  (hu)  of  libations,  who  were 
the  reciting  priests  of  the  ritual  of  the  Brahmanas,  and  who 
took  over  the  work  of  reciting  and  preserving  history  which 
had  before  been  combined  with  the  duties  of  the  Bhri-gu 
and  Angiras,  and  became  the  Asipu  of  the  Akkadians, 
the  Prashashtri  of  the  Hindus,  and  the  sons  of  Joseph  of 
the  Jews.  It  was  from  the  ranks  of  these  three  orders  that 
the  Hindu  caste  of  Brahmins  and  the  Hebrew  tribe  of 
Levi  were  formed. 

These  priestly  historians,  who  had  become  the  sons  of  Shem, 
the  name,  when  framing  nature  myths,  and  changing  those 
formerly  made  into  national  histories,  began  the  custom  of 
giving  names  to  the  mythic  heroes,  thus  showing  that  they 
belonged  to  the  age  when  the  fear  of  mentioning  names, 
which  might  lead  to  danger  to  the  person  named  from 
private  feuds,  had  passed  away.  The  names,  however,  in 
historical  myths,  never  denoted  individuals,  but  personified 
ideas  describing  epochs,  and  their  meaning,  as  I  show  in 
Essays  i.  and  ii.,  give  a  clew  to  the  purport  of  the  story  in 
which  they  appeared.  It  is  names  thus  formed  which  are 
those  of  the  fathers  and  mothers  named  in  the  primitive 
genealogies  of  the  Jews.  One  of  the  earliest  instances  of  this 
process,  to  which  I  have  several  times  called  attention  in 
these  Essays,  is  the  transformation  of  the  myth  of  the  three 
mother-seasons  into  one  which  told  of  the  union  of  the 
Northern  and  Southern  races,  under  the  names  of  Lamech, 
the  Akkadian  and  Hindu  father-god  Lamga  or  Linga,  and 
his  two  wives,  Adah,  the  Akkadian,  Edu,  the  darkness,  the 
11 


i 


xviii     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Nortliem  winter-mother  of  the  young  sun-god,  and  Zillah, 
the  Akkadian  Tsil-lu  or  Tsir-lu,  the  Southern  mother  of  the 
snake  {tsir)  race  (lu). 

It  was  from  the  union  of  these  races  that  the  sons  of  the 
rivers,  the  people  called  in  Genesis  the  Hebrew  sons  of  Eber, 
the  grandson  of  Arpachsad,  meaning  Armenia,  and  in  their 
original  home  in  Georgia  or  Armenia,  Ibai-erri,  the  people 
(erri)  of  the  rivers  {Ibai)^  the  Iberian  or  Basques,  were  born. 
It  is  in  the  mythic  history  of  their  birth  that  we  find  a  most 
marvellous  instance  of  a  widespread  historical  myth  which, 
in  its  earliest  form,  was  a  nature  myth,  dating  back  to  the 
beginning  of  cereal  cultivation  in  the  North.  Tlie  two 
mother-goddesses  who  are  called  in  Genesis  Adah  and  Zillah 
were  those  more  universally  known  as  Is-tar  and  Sar.  I 
have  traced  the  mythological  descent  of  Is-tar  at  great  length 
in  Essay  in.,  and  have  also  shown  the  transformations  of  the 
goddess  Sar  after  she  became  the  cloud-goddess  of  Armenia. 
It  is  here  that  I  must  set  forth  the  stages  of  her  earlier 
descents  as  mother-goddess  of  the  confederated  barley-grow- 
ing races  of  Asia  Minor.  The  Iberians,  also  known  as 
Basques,  meaning  the  sons  of  the  forest  or  village  {baso)^ 
are  by  tliis  last  name  shown  to  count  among  their  ancestors, 
the  Indian  villagers,  the  sons  of  the  tree  and  Southern  snake. 
'Jliey  were,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  the  first  growers  of  wheat, 
Iwirley,  and  other  Northern  cereal  crops,  and  they  called 
wheat  Ogai,  meaning  the  material  (Jcai)  for  bread  {ogi\  or 
(Jari,  meaning  tlie  summer  grain  ripening  in  the  hot  season 
iffur)^  anil  this  last  name  '  Gari,'  is  still  used  by  the  Aj-me- 

'  i'lKU.  xi.  12-14. 

"*  Thin  and  nil  other  interpretations  of  Basque  names,  for  which  I  have 
lf/il  ifivcn  other  authorities,  are  taken  from  Van  £ys'  Dictiotittaire  Basque- 


PREl'ACE  xix 

nians  to  denote  barley.^  They,  like  the  wheat  and  barley 
growers  of  India  at  the  present  day,  lived  on  bread  made 
of  the  grain 'they  gi*ew,  and  hence  grain  was  to  them 
the  staff  or  bread  of  life,  the  father  of  the  race,  tlie  god 
Linga. 

But  before  grain  was  made  into  bread,  it  had  to  be  sepa- 
rated from  the  husk,  and  this  was  done  by  throwing  it  from 
liaskets  against  the  wind,  so  as  to  winnow  it.  These  baskets 
were  the  Greek  Liknos  and  the  Latin  Van n us  of  the  Bacchic 
processions,  the  fan-shaped  basket  in  which  were  carried  the 
sacrificial  utensils  and  the  Jirst  JruitSy  the  symbol  of  the 
Semitic  sacrifice  of  the  eldest  son.  The  mention  of  them 
togetlicr  with  the  hurdles  of  Arbutus  wood  in  Virgil's  list 
of  the  paraphernalia  of  the  festival  of  the  Eleusinian  mother, 
the  barley-goddess,  Demeter,  shows  not  only  that  they  had 
a  mystic  meaning,  but  also  gives  a  clew  to  their  mythic 
history.  He  speaks  of  the  *Arbuteae  crates  et  mystica 
vannus  lacchi.*"  -  Here  the  crates  or  hurdles  are  described 
as  made  of  Arbutus  wood,  an  evergreen  tree,  and  in  its 
name  we  find  the  same  root,  ra  or  ar,  denoting  the  Northern 
sun  Ra  as  an  artificer,  which  appears  in  that  of  the  Sanskrit 
Kibhus,  the  Greek  Orpheus,  and  the  Hebrew  Arba,  meaning 
four.  In  the  sacrificial  ceremony  marked  as  mystic  by  the 
epithet  given  to  the  Vannus  or  winnowing  fan,  the  grain 
was,  after  it  had  been  trodden  out  by  oxen,  winnowed  in  the 
scjuare  enclosure  railed  off  from  the  rest  of  the  threshing- 
floor  by  hurdles  of  Arbutus,  the  evergreen  tree  sacred  to  the 
four  makers  or  artificers,  the  earthly  fire  and  sun-god  of  the 
year  of  four  seasons.     TTie  grain  stored  in  this  consecrated 

^  Transactions  of  Ninth  International  Congress  of  Orientalists,  Minas 
TcWraz,  *  Notes  sur  la  Mythologie  Armenienne  Akhbour,*  Sect  x.,  Anthro- 
pology and  Mythology,  iii.  vol.  ii.  p.  824. 

*  Virgil,  Geor,  i.  166^ 


i 


XX       RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

enclosure  was  that  which  had  been  cleansed  of  its  impurities 
and  released  from  its  cradle,  the  husk,  and  which  had  thus 
become  the  full-grown  son  of  the  barley-mother  lacchus, 
whose  name  means  the  *  moving  ^-god  (Jaksh),  the  fatlier  of 
life  to  the  sons  of  the  rivers.  But  the  grain  could  never 
have  come  to  maturity  without  the  protection  of  the  mother- 
husk  or  sheath,  and  it  and  the  winnowing  basket  which  held^ 
before  their  separation,  the  aged  and  withered  mother-husk 
united  to  her  son,  were  both  regarded  with  reverence.  Thus 
the  basket  became  the  symbol  of  the  mystic  mother-husk,  the 
cradle  in  which  the  grain  was  swung  in  the  breeze  during 
the  process  of  growing  and  ripening,  and  hence  it  is  that  in 
the  Gond  Song  of  Lingaly  the  god  Lingal,  the  Hebrew 
Lamech,  was  swung  by  the  seven  days  of  the  week,  the  seven 
wives  of  the  four  original  Gonds,  tlie  season-gods  of  the  year 
of  four  seasons  whom  he  had  trained  to  be  growers  of  rice 
and  founders  of  villages.^ 

This  swinging  of  the  infant-god  in  the  winnowing  basket, 
his  cnulle,  is  still  celebrated  in  India  on  the  3il  of  the  light 
half,  or  about  the  18th  of  Sravan  (July-August),-  the  month 
couKccrated  to  the  serpent-mothers  of  the  matriarchal  age. 

This  reverence  for  the  basket  as  the  cradle  whence  the 
young  father-god,  the  Bread  of  Life,  the  husked  grain, 
stepped  forth  to  be  the  father  of  the  corn-growing  and  corn- 
eating  races,  must  have  come  down  from  the  original  wheat 
and  barley  growers,  the  Basques,  who  spoke  an  agglutinative 
language  akin  to  tliat  now  spoken  by  their  descendants. 
IIcfiicL*  it  is  to  Basque  we  must  look  for  the  original  name  of 
the  b/isket-mother.    Tliis  is  found  in  the  name  Sare  or  Zare, 

'  Mislop,  Ahoni^^inal  Tribes  of  the  Central  Provifues^  'Song  of  Langal,* 
C«nto  ii.  338-438. 
•  !•'.  S.  Growse,  McUhuray  A  District  Memoir,     *  Festivals  at  Brindabun,* 

P'  247- 


PREFACE  xxi 

meaning  a  basket,  and  its  root  is  the  same  as  that  of  Zarika 
or  Sarats,  meaning  *  osier,^  which  becomes  in  the  Latin  Salix, 
with  the  same  meaning.  It  was,  tlierefore,  from  tlie  osiers 
growing  round  the  sources  of  the  mother-rivers  of  the 
Iberian  race  of  Asia  Minor,  sons  of  the  twin-gods  Day  and 
Night,  born  on  the  Xanthus,  or  yellow  river,  whence  the 
yellow  men  sprang,  that  they  took  the  name  of  the  goddess 
Sar  or  Shar  or  Tzar,  the  basket-mother  of  the  grain  which 
was  the  father  of  the  descendants  of  the  sons  of  the  rivers, 
and  it  was  these  same  people  who  originated  this  myth  who 
made  that,  telling  how  the  seven  Heliadse,  or  daughters  of 
the  sun,  the  sisters  of  Fhaethon,  the  god  of  the  burning  and 
destroying  summer  of  the  South,  were  changed  into  the  poplar 
trees,^  which  belong  to  the  same  order  of  Salicacecc  as  the 
willows,  and  also  line  the  rivers  of  Asia  Minor,  where  they 
are  worshipped  as  parent-trees  by  the  Armenians.^  It  was 
this  goddess-mother  Sar  of  the  Basques  of  Asia  Minor,  the 
land  of  copper,  who  became  the  goddess  -  mother  of  the 
Akkadians,  called  *  Sala  with  the  copper  hand,"*  the  wife  of 
I)umu-zi,  the  young  sun-god  at  Eridu,  the  great  Eupliratean 
port,'  and  her  name  also  appears  in  that  of  the  Akkadian 
god  Serakh,  the  god  of  corn,  wlio  is  said  to  be  the  spirit  of 
I-shara,  the  Home  of  Bar  or  Shar.* 

In  this  genealogy  of  the  goddess  Sar,  the  corn-goddess, 
daughter  of  the  willow,  we  see  the  origin  of  the  symbol  of 

^  Encyclopadia  Britannica,  Art.  *  Phaethon,*  vol.  xviii.  p.  727  ;  Hyguras 
Fabulay  cliv. 

*  Minas  Tchdraz,  'Notes  sur  la  Mythologie  Armenienne.'  Arbres  Sacr^s 
says  that  the  parent-trees  worshipped  by  the  Armenians  are  the  Sos,  the 
Silver  Poplar,  and  another  poplar  called  the  *Pardi,*  Transactions  of  the 
J^inth  International  Congress  of  Orientalists^  Sect.  x.  *  Anthropology  and 
Afythology/  vol.  ii.  p.  826. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  212. 

*  Ibid,  p.  134  note  i. 


i 


xxii      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  reed  cradle  in  which  all  the  fathers  and  leaders  of  the 
great  tortoise  or  Kushite  race  were  consigned  to  the  guar- 
dianship of  the  rivers. 

But,  far  as  we  have  tracked  the  myth  of  the  goddess  Sar, 
we  have  not  yet  reached  the  original  seed-bed  of  the  story. 
The  name  Sar,  Tzar,  or  Shar  is  clearly  one  which  shows 
traces  of  being  a  Southern  sibilant  form  of  an  original 
Northern  syllable  containing  a  guttural,  and  I  have  also 
shown  that  the  goddess  Sar  was  originally  looked  on  as  the 
husk  or  sheath  of  the  seed.  This  brings  us  to  the  English 
word  *  shard,'  meaning  the  wing-case  or  husk  of  a  beetle, 
and  the  original  form  of  this  word  *  shard'  appears  in  the 
Low  German  skaard,  the  Icelandic  skard^  the  High  German 
scharte^  and  they  mean,  like  *  sherd  **  in  our  *  potsherd,**  a 
piece  of  pottery.  The  trade  of  the  potter  originated  in  tlie 
North,  and  it  was  by  this  invention  that  the  Northern  races 
supplied  themselves  with  the  vessels  for  carrying  liquids 
which  Southern  forest  races  found  ready^to  their  hands  in 
the  gourds  and  hollow  bamboos,  to  which  they  added  the 
goat-skin  bags  tanned  by  the  bark  of  the  Southern  forest 
trees.  Therefore  before  the  goddess-mother  of  the  grain 
became  an  osier  basket,  she  must  have  been  called  in  an 
earlier  age,  by  the  Northern  section  of  the  united  confederacy 
of  the  sons  of  the  rivers,  an  earthen  jar  or  vessel.  It'^is 
these  united  Northern  and  Southern  races  who  appear  in  tlie 
Mahabhurata  and  Brahmanas  as  the  worshippers  of  the  jar 
containing  originally  both  the  seed-grain  and  that  husked 
for  bread-making,  and  this  became  the  Drona-kalasha  or 
vessel  in  which  the  Soma,  the  seed  or  sap  of  life,  was  mixed. 
This  is,  at  the  Soma  festival,  worshipped  as  the  god  called  in 
the  ritual  in  the  Brahmanas  Prajapati,  the  lord  (pati)  of 
living  beings  {prqja\  who  makes  the  seasons,  the  god  Ka^ 


PREFACE  xxiii 

that  is,  the  god  who  infused  the  soul  of  life  (ka)  into  the 
grain.^     Drona,  bom  of  the  jar,  becomes  in  the  Mahabharata 
the  tutor   of  the  young   Kauravya   or  tortoise,   and   the 
Pandava  or  sun-princes,  and  he  is  called  the  *  pot-bom  ^  son 
of  Bharad-vaja,  the  lark,  the  bird  of  heaven  bom  from  the 
seed  of  the  gods,  the  grain  placed  in  an  earthen   vessel.^ 
Hence  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  myth,  which  arose  in 
Asia  Minor,  and  made  the  barley  and  wheat  growing  races 
sons  of  the  seed-grain  stored  in  earthen  jars,  was  one  that 
they  brought  with  them  to  India.      Tliis  is  made  still  more 
certain  when  we  remember  that  Drona  is  the  father  of  the 
Kauravya  leader  called  Ashvatthaman,  the  Ash  vattlia  orFicus 
reUgiosa^  the  father-tree  of  the  Buddhists,  and  of  the  genera- 
tions of  religious  teachers,  of  whom  Gautama  Buddha  is  the 
first  individual  whose  existence  is  a  certain  fact.     Ash  vat- 
thaman,   at   the  close  of  the  war  between  the  Kauravyas 
and  Pandavas,  killed  Drislithadyumna,  meaning  the  *  seen  * 
(driskthd)  briglit  one  {dywntia)^  the  miraculously  born  king 
of  the  Pafichalas  or  five-  (punch)  headed  Naga  race,  whom  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  in.  to  be  the  sacrificial  flame  of  the 
altar  of  burnt  offering,  together  with  his  brother  or  sister, 
the  bisexual  god  Shikhandin,  the  Somakas,  idolatrous  woi> 
shippers  of  Soma,  the  seed  of  life,  and  all  tlie  sons  of  the 
Pandava  princes,^  except  the  son  of  Arjuna,  tlie  fair  {arjtin) 
prince  called   Phalguni,  or  the  young  bull-god,  the  fruit 
(phul)  of  the  plougliing  race,  and,  therefore,  the  grain-god, 
and  Su-bhadra,  meaning  the  blessed  Su,  or  sap  of  life.     She, 
as  I  show   in  Essay   iv.,   was    the   mountain-goddess,   the 
counterpart  of  Durga,  the  twin  sister  of  Krishna,  the  black 

^  Eggcling,  So/.  Brdh,  iv.   3,   i,  6;  iv.   5,  5,   11  ;  iv.  5,  6,  4 ;  S.B.E. 
vol.  xxvi.  pp.  318,  408,  410. 

*  Mahabharata  AdI  {Sambhava)  Parva,  Ixxxi.  pp.  383-386. 

•  Ibiii,  Sauptika  Parva,  viii.  pp.  24-34. 


A 


xxiv     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

antelope,  and  also  of  the  mother  of  the  sons  of  the  cow,  the 
Phrygian  mother-goddess  Ida  or  Ira,  whose  name  appears  in 
Basque  as  Iru  (three),  that  is,  the  mother-year  of  three  seasons, 
all  of  which  appear  on  the  mountain,  in  its  snowy  summit  of 
winter,  the  cool  spring  half-way  down,  ending  with  summer 
at  its  foot.  Hence  the  barley-growing  races,  whose  royal 
stock  was  left  by  the  father-tree  of  righteousness  to  rule  the 
land,  were  the  sons  of  the  year  of  three  seasons,  and  the 
young  bull-god  reared  on  the  corn  preserved  in  the  mother- 
jar.  It  is  this  myth,  which  is  again  exactly  reproduced  in 
that  of  Ab-ram  and  Sara,  in  which  the  sun-god  Ra  or  Ram, 
the  son  of  Terah,  the  antelope  of  Nahor,  or  the  Euplirates, 
becomes  by  Sara  the  withered  Imsk  which  nurses  tlie  seed 
grain  in  its  growth  out  of  the  earth,  the  father  of  Isaac,  the 
*  laughing'^  corn-stalk  crowned  with  its  ripe  ear.  He  is 
the  blind  house-pole  father  of  the  generations  of  barley- 
growers  born  from  his  twin  sons  Esau,  the  goat-god,  and  liis 
Hittite  wives,  parents  of  the  sons  of  Edom,  or  the  red  earth, 
the  home  of  the  red  race,  and  from  Ya-kob,  the  sun  water- 
god  la,  and  his  wives  Leah,  the  wild  cow,  and  Rachel,  the 
ewe,  daughters  of  Laban,  the  moon-god  of  Haran.  They 
were  the  mothers  of  the  law-abiding  plougliing  race,  the 
sons  of  the  bull  and  wild  cow,  and  the  prophet  shepherd 
sons  of  the  sheep-mother  and  the  ram,  the  sun-god  conse- 
crated to  Varuna,  the  god  of  the  rain  {var)^  and  of  the  dark 
heaven  of  night.  The  race  thus  bom  was  that  of  the 
Semitic  traders  which  constantly  strove  to  make  morality 
and  religion  synonymous  terms,  and  who  changed  the  parent- 
tree  of  the  trading  races,  the  Vaishya,  from  the  Udumbara 
or  Ficus  glomerata^  the  tree  out  of  which  the  Amshu  Gralia, 
or  cup  representing  the  Soma  plant  or  tree  of  life,  drunk  at 

^  Isaac  means  'laughter.' 


PREFACE  XXV 

the  idolatrous  Soma  sacrifices  was  made  ^  to  the  Ashvattha 
or  Pipul-tree,  the  Ficus  religiosa. 

But  there  is  also  another  mythology  in  which  we  find  the 

husked  grain  worshipped  as  the  parent  of  life.     This  is  the 

^  Eg}^ptian,  which  makes  the  sacred  beetle  {Jchpr\  the  scarab, 

the  symbol  of  life  protected,  like  the  grain,  by  its  *  shard,** 

and  this  is  sacred  to  Osiris,  the  god  who  taught  men  how 

to  grow  wheat,  barley,  and  cereal  crops.    It  is  as  tlie  *  shard ' 

or  sheath  of  the  year,  the  winter  season,  that  in  the  fairy 

tales  founded  on  the  three  seasons,  Cinderella,  the  guardian 

jar  of  the  seed  grain,  the  winter  marked  by  her  glass  or  ice 

shoe,  becomes  the  wife  of  the  sun-prince,  and  mother  of  the 

sun-god  of  the  coming  year. 

It  was  among  the  worshippers  and  sons  of  the  goddess 
Sar  that  the  astronomical  computation  of  time,  the  stages 
of  which  I  have  traced  in  Essays  iii.  and  iv.,  began.  And  it 
was  they  who  fmmed  the  myth  of  the  twin  children  of 
Saranyu,  the  goddess  Sar,  the  twins  Day  and  Night,  originally 
bom  on  the  osier  and  poplar-lined  river  Xanthus,  the  yellow 
river  of  Asia  Minor,  the  mother-river  of  the  yellow  race. 
It  was  they  who,  in  Greece,  worshipped  the  goddess  Sar,  not 
only  as  the  mother  of  the  later  Erinnyes,  but  as  the  twin 
Charites  who  bear  her  name  (khar^sar)^  the  two  seasons  of 
the  year  of  the  Pleiades,  who  were  the  first  supreme  local 
gods  of  Sparta.  And  it  was  this  same  race  who,  when  they 
-declared  themselves  to  be  the  sons  of  the  god  of  thought 
and  measurement  (rwna,  inen)^  and  called  themselves  Minyans, 
established  the  capital  of  the  coni-growing  I'aces  at  Orcho- 
menos  in  Bceotia.  It  was  then  that  thev  substituted  the 
year  of  three  seasons  for  that  of  two,  and  made  the  three 
Charites   the  three   mother-goddesses   of  the   year   of  the 

^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  iv.  6,  I,  3 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  424. 


A 


xxvi     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

barley-growers,  whose  festivals  were  celebrated  with  the 
dances  which  the  matriarchal  section  of  the  confederacy  had 
brought  with  them  from  India.^  They,  as  the  corn-growing 
races,  became  the  great  irrigators  of  the  ancient  world,  who 
made  in  Bceotia  the  stupendous  series  of  underground 
channels  by  which  they  regulated  the  flow  of  the  waters  of 
Lake  Copais.^  It  was  they  who,  as  the  Mina^an  Sabaeans  in 
South-western  Arabia,  built  the  gigantic  dam  which  irrigated 
the  lands  of  MaVib,  their  capital,  the  destruction  of  which 
is  spoken  of  as  a  great  national  calamity  in  the  Koran .^ 
Their  presence  in  Egypt  is  attested  by  the  great  barrage  of 
the  Nile  made  by  the  first-named  king  of  Egypt,  Mena,  who 
perpetuates  the  name  of  their  father-god.*  In  India  they 
are  the  sons  of  Manu  and  Ida,  lUi,  or  Ira,  who  covered  the 
Central  Provinces  and  Southern  India  with  great  irrigating 
reservoirs  such  as  the  great  lake  at  Nowagaon  in  the 
Khandfira  district,  which  is  seventeen  miles  round,^  and  the 
age  during  which  tliey  established  their  rule  in  Greece  is 
marked  by  the  circular  beehive  tombs  at  Orchomenos,^ 
whicli  are  forms  of  the  round  barrows,  the  distinguishing 
marks  of  the  Bronze  AgeJ  It  was  these  barley-growing 
yellow  races  who,  in  India,  worshipped  the  goddess-mother 
Sar,  as  the  god  Hari,  son  of  Har  or  Sar,  bom  on  the  river 
Yamuna,  the  river  of  the  twins  (yama).  It  was  they  who, 
iLs  tlie  barley-growing  races,  formed  part  of  the  confederacy 
of  the  Ooraons  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  made  the  barley- 

'  Encyclopedia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  xi.  Art.  *  Graces,'  p.  26. 
'■*  Ibid,  vol.  iii.  Art.  *  Boeotia,*  p.  854. 

'  Ibid,   vol.    xxiv.  Art.  'Yemen,*   p.    739;  Palmer,  Qur'dn,  xxxiv.   11; 
S.B.E.,  vol.  ix.  p.  152. 

•  Encyclopi€dia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  vii.  Art.  *  Egypt,'  p.  73i, 

•  Hunter,  Gazetteer  of  India^  s.v.  '  Bhandara,'  vol.  ii.  p.  361. 

•  Schuchhardt's  Schliemann's  Exccevationsy  chap.  v.  pp.  299-303. 
^  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  Second  Exlition,  chap.  v.  p.  129. 


PREFACE  xxvii 

sowing  festival  one  of  their  most  important  seasonal  feasts. 
It  is  these  tribes  which  have  perpetuated  the  name  of  Sar, 
their  goddess-mother,  in  that  of  the  village  Sarna,  consecrated 
to  the  gods  of  life,  and  in  the  name  of  the  Sal-tree,  their 
parent-tree.  It  is  also  the  goddess-mother  Sar  who  has 
given  her  name  to  the  Sanskrit  autumn  season  called 
*  Shar-ad,'  and  to  the  Shraddha  or  funeral  feasts  of  roasted 
barley  and  barley  porridge  offered  at  the  autumn  Pitri-yajiia 
or  father"*s  sacrifice  to  the  fathers  of  the  corn-growing  races. 
The  earliest  of  these  were  the  Turanian  sons  of  Danu,  the 
judge  called  Tur-vasu,  or  people  whose  Bas  or  Vas,  the 
creating  tree-god,  was  tlie  meridian  pole.  Tliey  were  also 
the  Hittites  called  Khati  by  the  Assyrians,  a  name  meaning 
the*  joined**  race,  which  they  still  preserve  in  the  Punjab, 
and  in  their  western  kingdom  of  Kathiawar  known  to  Sanskrit 
geographers  as  Sau-rashtra,  the  kingdom  of  the  Sus,  Saus 
or  Shus,  the  descendants  of  Su-bhadra,  the  blessed  Su  or 
Shu,  who  was  originally,  as  I  show  in  this  Essay  and  in 
Essay  iv.,  the  mother-bird  ^khu,**^  which  brings  the  rains, 
the  mother  of  the  Khati,  and  also  of  the  Kusliite  race.  It 
was  in  Sau-rashtra,  at  the  holy  hill  of  Pfilitana,  that,  as  I 
show  in  Essays  ii.  and  in.,  the  Jain  religion  was  founded, 
which  venerated  the  Ashvattha  or  Pipul-tree  as  the  mother- 
tree  of  the  holy  race,  and  which  discarded  all  sacrifices  save 
that  of  the  sacrificer  himself,  who  was  to  die  symbolically 
as  a  sacrificial  victim,  and  to  be  born  again  in  the  baptismal 
hath  of  regeneration  prescribed    for  Soma   sacrificers,  and 

^  The  syllable  x^  {J(fAu)  is  also  represented  in  Egyptian  hieroglyphics  by  an 
Ibb,  the  sacred  bird  which  was  supposed  to  destroy  snakes,  and  which  was 
the  form  in  which  the  original  mother  storm-bird,  the  parent  god  of  the  sons 
of  Kush,  the  tortoise,  who  succeeded  the  guardian  snake  of  the  matriarchal 
races,  was  worshipped  in  Egypt.  Encyclopccdia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition, 
voL  xi.  Art.  *  Hieroglyphics,'  p.  802. 


i 


xxviii    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

thus  to  acquire  the  new  nature  wliich  would  prompt  him  to 
obey  both  in  deed  and  spirit  the  moral  law. 

It  was  these  descendants  of  the  mother-goddess  Sar  who 
were  also  called  the  sons  of  Kapila,  the  yellow  Prishi  or 
antelope,  that  is,  of  the  female  antelope,  as  opposed  to  the 
male,  '  the  black  antelope/  They  were  the  united  agricul- 
tural races,  tlie  sons  of  the  fire-god,  the  Nun,  and  the 
rain  -  goddess,  the  mother-bird,  the  race  who,  like  the 
Akkadians  of  Girsu,  adopted  for  their  symbol  of  god  the 
fire-cross  ~  placed  upon  the  rain-cross  X  ^^  form  the 
eight-pointed  star  ^1^  wliich,  in  the  earliest  Akkadian  script, 
denotes  both  god  '  Dingir  ^  and  'Anu  or  Esh-shu,'*  both  of 
which  words  mean  an  ear  of  corn.^  It  was  they  who  first 
cleared  the  forests  of  Ayodhya  or  Oude,  the  land  of  the  god 
Rama,  the  mother  (ma)  of  Ra,  who  has  the  plough  for  his 
weapons  (ayudha),  and  tilled  the  Gangetic  valley.  They 
are  called  in  tlie  Zendavesta  *  the  golden-crowned  Hitashpa,^ 
the  Iiorses  (ashpa)  of  the  Hittites  who  killed  Ur-vakshaya, 
the  ancient  (Ur)  speaker  {vdkshaya\  a  name  of  Danu,  the 
judge,  who  was  the  eldest  of  the  sons  of  Sama  or  Shem,  the 
traditional  ancestor  of  the  Semitic  races.*  The  deatli  of 
Ur-vakshaya  commemorates  the  change  in  the  reckoning 
of  time  from  that  which  measured  it  by  the  voice  of  the 
thunder-god  in  the  storms  which  precede  the  rains,  and  by 
the  weeks  of  gestation  to  that  whicli  measured  it  by  the 
yearly  journey  of  the  sun-god  from  east  to  west,  and  west  to 
east,  round  the  four  points  of  the  compass,  described  in 
Essay  iv. 

^  Transactions  of  the  Ninth  International  Congress  of  Orientalists^  *  The 
Akkadian  Affinities  of  Chinese,*  by  the  Rev.  C.  J.  Ball,  M.A.,  §  viii. 
*  China,  Central  Asia  and  the  Far  East,'  p.  685. 

2  Darmesteter,   Zendavesta  Zamyad   Yaft,  41  ;    Ram    Yoft^    42 ;    Mill's 
Vasna,  ix.  10;  S.B.E.  vols,  xxiii.  pp.  296,  255,  xxxu  pp.  223-224. 


PREFACE  xxix 

The  races  united,  as  the  Khati  or  Hittites,  were  those 

called  by  the  Hindus  Ashura,  or  believers  in  six  {ash)  gods, 

the  male  and  female  gods  of  the  year  of  three  seasons,  and 

with  those  two  united  races  were  joined  the  Gautuma,  or 

sons  of  the  bull  (gut).     These  became  in  the  list  of  Hebrew 

tribes  the  sons  of  Asher — ^the  sea-faring  dwellers  on  the  coast 

of  Tyre,  a  name  which  reproduced  that  of  their  god  Tur, 

— and  of  their  primitive  settlement  in  the  Persian  Gulf,Turos, 

and  the  tribe  of  Gad,  the  builders  of  the  stone  cities  of 

Bashan,  the  land  of  the  bull,  and  of  their  god  Bash  or  Vash. 

These  sons  of  the  bull  were  the  first  conquering  swarm  of 

the  great  building  race  of  the  Goths,  the  Getae  of  Herodotus 

and    the   Jats   of  India,   whose   history  I   have  traced  in 

Efesay  V.  pp.  480-485. 

But  further,  most  convincing  proofs  of  the  great  historical 
value  of  the  evidence  given  by  mythic  tales,  ritual,  and 
linguistic  changes,  are  to  be  found  in  the  myth  and  ritual 
of  the  worship  of  Demeter.  In  the  older  form  of  the  Eleu- 
sinian  myth,  the  gods  worshipped  were  not  the  barley-mother 
and  her  son,  the  nurse-child  Demophoon,  who  became  the 
young  lacchus,  and  was  the  baked  bread  or  cakes  tried  in 
the  fire,^  but  the  father  and  mother  of  the  barley-growing 
races  and  their  daughter.  The  mythic  history  of  the  wor- 
ship of  these  three  parent-gods  gives  us,  as  I  shall  now  show, 
a  complete  account  of  the  union  of  the  three  races  and  of 
the  establishment  of  their  imperial  rule  under  the  guidance 
of  the  Gautuma,  Guti  or  Goths.  The  three  gods  of  the 
united  confederacy  were  Plouton  {Pluto\  Demeter,  and  Kore. 
The  root  of  Plouton  is  pel^  in  the  word  ttcXo),  *  to  turn,^  and 

^  Demeter,  after  the  loss  of  Kore  or  Persephone,  became  nurse  to  the 
child  Demophoon,  son  of  Celeus,  and,  to  make  him  immortal,  placed  him 
each  night  in  a  bath  of  fire,  Encyclopivdia  Briiannicay  Ninth  Edition,  Art. 
•  Eleusinia,'  vol.  viii.  p.  126. 


i 


XXX      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

this  is  also  the  root  of  our  word  pole :  thus  the  turning  god 
means  the  revolving  meridian  pole,  the  god  Tur  of  the  Indian 
Tur\'ashu,  the  twin  races,  the  heavenly  fire-drill,  generating 
heat  and  life  by  his  revolutions.  He  is  the  god  of  the 
Maghada  fire-worshippers,  otherwise  called  Ra-hu  or  the 
creator  Qiu)  of  Ra,  who  was  originally  the  sun-god  of  the 
Lithuanians.  He  is  the  sun  of  the  South  to  whom  the 
maiden  Kore  or  Persephone  descends  in  the  winter  when  the 
seed  is  in  the  ground. 

The  name  of  Demeter,  the  barley-mother,  contains  the 
root  of  the  Cretan  de-al^  barley,  and  it  was  in  Crete  that  she 
was  worshipped  as  the  mother  of  Plutus  or  Plouton,  and  the 
wife  of  Jasion,  the  Greek  form  of  the  Akkadian  water-god 
la  or  Ya.     In  cfe,  the  root  of  dc-ai^  we  find  the  original  root 
of  the  Greek   zeia  or  zea^  meaning  barley.     The  form  zi 
which  appears  in  zela.,  is  also  found  in  the  Akkadian  zi^  life, 
and  the  Basque  zi^  an  acorn,  the  seed  of  the  sacred  tree  of 
life  of  those  races  whose  priests  were  the  tree-  {dru)  bom 
Druids.     That  the  Akkadian  and  Basque  zi  represents  the 
Northern  de  or  di  in  Demeter,  is  shown  by  comparing  the 
Basque  and  Akkadian  zu^  thou,  with  the  German  du  and 
the   English    thou.     This    zi    also    appears    again    in   the 
Hindu  y?,  life.     Thus  barley,  called  de-ai^  means  the  plant 
of  life,  and  the  Greek  Zeiis  and  Theos  and  the  Latin  Deus^ 
all  mean  that  the  Supreme  God  is  the  Spirit  of  Life  {ze^  the^ 
or  cfc'),  or  life  itself,  the  life  which  exists  in  the  seed.     This 
life  is  shown  by  the  meaning  of  *  brightness '  given  to  the 
root  divy  formed  from  ffe,  to  be  the  life  of  daylight  and  sun- 
light which  ripened  the  barley.    But  the  mother  of  the  light 
of  life  was  the  mother-earth,  who  was  both  mother  of  the 
barley  and  of  the  Kuru  or  sons  of  the  tortoise  bom  from  the 
barley  seed,  the  maiden  Kore  or  Koure.     She  was  the  child 


PREFACE  xxxi 

of  the  revolving  pole  and  the  mother  earth,  to  whom  the 
pole  gives  life-giving  heat,  and  she  is  also  the  winter-bride 
of  her  fatlier,  hidden  out  of  sight  below  the  earth. 

The  name  Kore  or  Koure  comes  from  kur  or  Aror,  the 
Turanian  forms  of  the  root  gur^  meaning  in  all  its  forms, 
*  bent  or  curved/     Thus  Kore  means  something  *bent  or 
cur\'ed.'*     But  it  also  means  a  puppet  or  doll,  and  this  con- 
nects the  last  of  the  triad  of  parent-gods,  the  curved  seed 
grain  with  the  last  slieaf  of  the  harvest,  which  is  in  many 
countries  dressed  as  a  woman  and  hung  up  after  the  harvest- 
home  to  bless  the  house  of  the  farmer.     Her  birth  as  the 
daughter  of  the  barley  or  corn-mother,  is  distinctly  symbol- 
ised in  a  custom  of  the  commune  of  Saligne,  Canton  de 
Poiret,  Vendee,  where  the  farmer's  wife,  as  the  corn-mother,  is 
placed  in  a  blanket  with  the  last  sheaf,  and  the  two  are 
tossed  together  to  represent  the  winnowing  which  is  to  shake 
out  from  the  ears  of  the  last  sheaf  the  seed  grain,  the  mother 
of  life.     In  West  Prussia,  which,  like  East  Prussia,  was  once 
the  country  of  the  Lithuanians,  who  woi-ship  the  sun-god 
Ra,  the  last  sheaf  is  called   Hhe  corn   baby.*"     Thus   the 
original   daughter  of  the  earth-mother  and   the   meridian 
pole,  the  parents  of  the  corn-growing  races  of  Asia  Minor, 
was  the  seed  grain,  the  corn-mother  of  the  future  year.    That 
the  myth  in  this  form  was  conceived  by  a  Turanian  race 
speaking  an   agglutinative  language  and  believing  in  the 
divinity  of  pairs,  is  shown  by  the  worship  in  Java  of  the  first 
and  last  sheaf,  as  the  rice-bride  and  bridegroom  called  Padi- 
pen-gunten,  where  the  father-sheaf  Padi,  the  foot  (pad)  or 
the  begetter  (per),  is,  as  in  the  Greek  myth,  the  Southern 
winter  sun,  and  the  mother  (the  Tamil,  pen)^  the  woman,  is 
the  mother-earth.^ 

*  Frazer,  TAe  CoUen  Bottgh^  vol.  i.  pp.  33  ff. ,  343. 


xxxii    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

But  before  this  myth  was  bom  in  the  corn-fields  of  Asia 
Minor,  the  Northern  races  traced  their  birth  to  the  mother- 
mountain  whence  life  issued,  and  it  was  this  mother-moun- 
tain which  was  the  first  bent  or  curved  mother-goddess 
before  the  swelling  grain.  This  mountain  was  the  mother 
kur^  and  one  form  of  this  root  survives  in  the  Persian  kohj 
meaning  mountain.  But  that  the  original  form  was  kur  or 
gur^  is  shown  in  the  name  of  the  Kouretes,  the  dancing 
priests  of  Demeter,  the  Korubantes  of  Phrygia.  They 
watched  the  birth  of  her  son  in  Crete,  who  was  first  Plutus^ 
the  revolving  pole,  and  afterwards  the  young  Zeus,  the  god 
of  the  bright  day.  Tliey  were  called  rpiKopvde^;^  or  men 
with  the  three  helmets,  the  tiara ;  and  this  name  shows  that 
they  were  the  priests  of  the  mother-goddess  of  the  three 
seasons.  They  were  in  Rome  called  the  Salii,  the  leaping 
priests  of  the  Sabine  god  Quirinus  or  Kuirinus,  whose  name 
contains  the  root  kur^  and  whose  festival  was  held  on  the 
17th  of  February,  at  the  same  time  as  the  lesser  Eleusinia  at 
Athens,  and  as  the  great  Magh  festival  of  the  Gonds,  Santals,. 
Ooraons,  and  Mundas  is  celebrated  in  Bengal  and  Northern 
India.  In  these  last  feasts  the  dancers  are  the  village 
maidens,  and  they  are  the  prototypes  of  the  unsexed  dancing 
priests  of  Phrygia  and  the  consecrated  maidens  of  Istar,  the 
mother-mountain  goddess.  These  Salii  were  also  the  priests 
of  Mars,-  the  Etruscan  Mas,  the  god  of  increase,  the  Greek 
Ploutos,  or  wealth.  He  was  called  by  the  Sabines  Mar-mar, 
In  this  name  we  find  the  root  mar^  meaning  to  destroy  by 
friction,  to  grind,^  and  this  identifies  him  with  Plutus,  the 

^  Eur,  Bacch,  123.  This  was  the  peaked  *  tiara,*  the  distinctive  cap  of 
the  Hiltites,  Encyclofkvdia  Britanmca,  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  xii.  p.  26,  Art. 
•  Hittitcs,*  by  Professor  T.  K.  Cheyne. 

2  Encyclopicdia  Bntannica^  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  xv.,  Art.  *  Mars,'  p.  510. 

'  Max  Miiller,  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language^  Second  Series,  pp.  314, 
316. 


PREFACE  xxxiii 

revolving  pole.  But  the  name  Mar-mar  is  all  but  an  exact 
repetition  of  Mer-mer,  the  Akkadian  name  of  the  Assyrian 
Semite  god,  Ram-anu,  the  god  (ana)  Ram.  He,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  v.,  was  first  the  Indian  Ra-ma,  the  mother  of  Ra, 
the  sun-god,  the  mother-earth,  which  was  the  socket  in 
which  the  god  of  the  pole  generated  life-giving  heat,  other- 
wise called  Ur-vasi,  the  primaeval  (ur)  creatrix  (vasi)y  the 
wife  of  Pururavas,  the  thunder-god.  She  became  the  Kushite 
and  Semite  father-god,  the  son  of  Kauslialoya,  the  house 
(aloya)  or  mother  of  Kush ;  the  tortoise,  as  the  father-god, 
was  the  revolving  pole,  the  god  of  time,  the  god  still  called 
by  the  Hindus  Ram-ram.  The  revolution  of  the  pole  was 
apparently  symbolised  in  the  transposition  of  the  consonants 
which  turned  Ram-ram  into  Mar-mar.  But  whether  this  is 
the  real  history  of  the  origin  of  the  name  Mar-mar  or  not,  it 
is  at  any  rate  clear  that  the  Salii  in  their  two  functions,  and 
the  Kouretes,  were  the  dancing-priests  of  the  mother-moun- 
tain and  the  revolving  pole,  which  last  was  descended  through 
the  fire-drill  from  the  parent-tree  of  the  village  grove.  It  is 
also  clear  that  these  two  gods  were  the  parents  of  the  sons 
of  the  last  sheaf,  the  com-baby  Kore.  In  the  word  *  corn " 
the  root  hur  also  appears,  for  it  is  the  Gothic  Kaur-n,  and 
from  this  root  the  word  *  kernel,''  the  inner  seed  protected  by 
the  outer  shell  of  the  nut,  also  comes.  Thus  Kore  or  Koure 
is  the  seed-grain  in  the  mother-mountain.  She  is  tluis  the 
correlative  of  the  Sala-gramma  of  the  Hindus,  the  fire-stone, 
the  mother  of  fire  placed  in  the  centre  of  the  mother-moun- 
tain. This  stone  has  in  the  Hittite  sign  for  Istar  A. 
become  the  triangular  seed-gi'ain,  the  cone  worshipped  as  the 
sign  of  the  Divinity  by  the  Phoenicians  and  Kabiri.  The 
inner  seed-triangle  in  the  mother-mountain  is  the  Phoenician 
goddess  Ba-hu,  the  creator  (/lu)  of  existence  {ba\  who  became 

•  •  • 

in 


xxxiv    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

in  Grenesis  Bohu,  or  the  void.^  She  is  the  Shamir  or  wonder- 
stone  of  the  Semitic  legend,  called  by  iGIian,  in  the  Greek 
form  of  the  myth,  Troa,  the  grass.  It  is  said  in  the  Talmud 
to  be  as  small  as  a  barley-corn,  but  to  be  able  to  pierce  even 
the  hardest  rocks.*  TTius  this  seed  of  life  is  clearly  the  seed 
of  the  sacrificial  Kusha  grass,  which  in  the  Kushite  ritual 
supplied  the  *barhis,'  or  sacred  seats  of  the  barley-eating 
fathers,  to  whom  the  autumn,  the  barley  season,  was  dedicated, 
the  parent  of  the  Hindu  Kushika,  of  which  I  have  spoken  at 
length  in  Essay  iii.  But  the  original  seed  in  the  centre  of 
the  mother-mountain  was  not  barley  or  grass-seed,  but  the 
tire-stone,  and  I  must  now  trace  the  history  implied  in  the 
transfer  of  divine  power  from  the  fire-stone  to  the  seed. 

The  root  kur  appears  in  the  names  of  the  sons  of  Kur,  the 
Kurds  of  Armenia,  and  the  variations  of  their  name  show 
Jcur^  Jcal^  gor^  and  gar,  as  variant  forms  of  the  root,  for  they 
are  the  Chaldean  race,  called  by  the  Assyrians  Kar-du,  Kal-du, 
and  Gar-du,  while  gor  appears  in  the  name  Gordiani.  These 
point  to  an  original  form  of  the  root  beginning  with  the 
Northern  g^  and  this  is  found  in  the  Basque  gar^  fire,  and  its 
primary  form,  ghar^  means  in  Sanskrit  *to  be  warm.^  There- 
fore the  *  curved  one,'  the  mother-mountain,  must  have  been 
originally  the  fire-mountain  made  pregnant  and  raised  by 
fire.  This  is  the  volcano  Mount  Ararat,  the  burning  mother- 

1  The  goddess  Ba-hu  is  the  old  Slav  god  Bo-gu,  our  Bogie,  the  distributor, 
the  Santa  Claus  of  nursery  mythology,  and  the  earliest  form  of  the  name  was 
Bhu-ghu.  This  is  shown  by  the  Sanskrit  Bha-ga  and  the  Zend  Ba-gha, 
from  whence  comes  the  Hindi  Bagh,  garden.  Bhaga  in  the  Rigveda  is  the 
god  of  the  tree  of  life,  the  tree  with  the  edible  fruit  (Jevons,  Schrader,  Prehts- 
toric  Antiquities  of  Aryans^  p.  24;  Tiele,  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Ancient 
Religions,  •  Religion  among  the  Wends,*  p.  185).  The  root  bhu  in  Sanskrit 
means  *  to  exist.*  This  god,  the  Giver  of  Life,  was  worshipped  by  the  Phry- 
gians as  Zeus  Bagaios. 

2  See  the  myth  given  at  length.  Essay  i.,  pp.  27-30.  ^ 


PREFACE  XXXV 

mountain  of  the  Armenian  Kurds  of  Kurdistan,  whence  their 
parent-river  Kur  descends  to  the  Caspian  or  Kushite  sea. 
This  was  the  home  of  the  people  called  by  Herodotus'  infor- 
mants the  Massa,  or  the  Greater  Getse,  whose  ethnology 
I  have  discussed  in  Essay  v.  One  of  their  original  totems 
was  apparently  the  ploughing  bull  and  the  milk-giving  cow, 
and  they  were  a  mixed  race  of  nomadic  herdsmen  and  agri- 
cultural fanners.  It  was  these  latter  who,  on  their  union 
with  the  pastoral  triljes,  the  sons  of  the  goat,  made  the 
antelope  the  totem  of  the  united  races,  which  was  afterwards 
changed  to  the  buU,  and  these  farming  races  first,  as  I  shall 
show  presently,  called  themselves  the  sons  of  the  enclosing 
snake  {ahi  or  ecM8\  and  also  the  sons  of  the  bird.  The 
dominant  tribe  among  the  Kurd  confederacy  are  the  agri- 
cultural Gar-ans,  who  speak  an  Aryan  tongue  with  no  Semitic 
intermixture.  They  are  growei*s  of  wheat  and  barley, 
whose  name  shows  that  their  god  *  An  '  was  Gur,  the  burn- 
ing mountain  or  the  household  fire,  which  gave  the  name 
^ur  to  the  house  in  Hindi.  These  people,  called  by  the 
Assyrian  Semites  who  succeeded  them  and  the  Akkadians 
-Gur-du  and  Kal-du,  were  called  by  the  Akkadian  Finns, 
who  disliked  double  consonants,  and  changed  the  Northern 
d  into  a  ^,  the  Guti,  and  from  this  name  they  took  that  of 
Gutium,  the  name  given  by  the  Akkadians  to  Assyria.  Thus 
these  Guti  were  identical  with  the  race  of  Chaldean  astro- 
nomers who  preceded  the  Semitic  sons  of  Assor.^  As  the 
Guti  they  were  the  sons  of  Gut,  the  bull,  but  before  they 
were  the  sons  of  a  named  father  they  were,  as  the  Gur,  the 
«)n8  of  the  wild  cow,  Gauri,  the  mother  of  the  Indian  Gonds. 
They,  when  they  became  the  Gautuma,  the  sons  of  the  bull, 

^  Efuy, Brif., 9ih  edition,  vol.  xiv.,  Art.  *  Kurdistan,'  by  Sir  H.  Rawlinson, 
pp.  156-159.     Lenormant,  Chaldean  Magic ^  chaps,  xxvi.  xxvii.  pp.  339,  361. 


xxxvi    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

made  Rohini,  the  red  cow,  the  star  Aldebaran,  their  goddess- 
mother,  who  was  also  the  goddess-mother  of  the  Arabian 
sons  of  Sheba.  It  was  as  the  Gaurians  that  they  ruled  the 
Euphratean  Delta  under  the  Patesi,  or  priest-kings  of  Gir-su, 
who  ruled  the  confederations  governed  by  a  central  city,  of 
which  I  have  traced  the  history  in  Essay  ii.  They  were  the 
Gond  worshippers  of  the  plough-god,  Nagur,  who,  as  we 
learn  from  the  Song  of  Lingal^  formed  in  India  the  imperial 
race  of  Kurus  or  Kauravyas,  sons  of  Kur,  by  uniting  the 
Maghad&s  or  flre-worshippers,  sons  of  Mug-ral,  the  alligator, 
with  the  sonsof  Dame,  the  tortoise,  the  earlier  dwellers  in  the 
land.  But  lK*fore  this  they  had  in  their  home  in  Asia  Minor 
formed  the  first  confederacy  of  the  Kur,  and  united  together 
as  the  Hittites  the  three  races  of  the  fire- worshipping  Bhru- 
gas  or  Phru-gas,  the  matriarchal  Amazons,  and  the  sons  of  the 
bird  or  cow,  the  Northern  Goths.  These  confederated  races, 
as  I  show  in  Essays  iv.  and  v.,  were,  before  they  were  the 
sons  of  tlie  bull  or  cow,  the  sons  of  the  goat  and  antelope, 
who  traced  their  origin  to  the  antelope'*s  favourite  food,  the 
Kusha  grass  {Poa  cynosuroides)  growing  on  the  river  banks. 
When  they  had  replaced  this  grass  by  cora  they  became  the 
sons  of  com,  the  mother  Gauri  or  Koure.  They  then  called 
in  India  the  wild  cow,  parent  of  their  ploughing  cattle,  by 
the  name  of  Gauri,  in  memory  of  the  burning  mountain, 
while  in  Europe  she  became  Koure,  the  last  sheaf,  the  emblem 
of  the  winter  season,  the  mother  of  the  future  year. 

But  in  this  abstract  of  the  mythic  history  of  the  barley- 
growing  races,  as  gathered  from  the  worship  of  the  barley- 
mother,  I  have  not  accounted  for  the  ruling  race  who  traced 
their  descent  to  the  mother-bird  Khu,  the  maker  of  the 
wind  which  bore  her  sons,  the  Shus,  on  the  voyages  whence 
they  gathered  the  wealth  which  made  them  lords  of  the 


PREFACE  XXX  vii 

world,  the  mother-bird  which,  by  its  messengers,  the  stork, 
the  rain-bird,  and  the  swallows,  brought  th^  winds  and  the 
seasons  of  the  year.  It  was  the  earliest  section  of  this  great 
race  which  intervened  as  rulers  between  the  fire-worshippers 
and  the  sons  of  the  antelope  and  cow.  I  have  in  Essay  i. 
shown  that  the  earliest  myth,  attesting  the  supremacy  of  the 
rain-god  over  the  god  of  the  fiery  cloud  which  will  not  give  up 
its  rain,  is  that  which  exhibits  Horus,.the  god  of  the  revolving 
pole,  as  the  hawk-headed  warrior  who  kills  the  dragon  or  croco- 
dile of  drought.  It  is  also  as  sons  of  the  conquering  rain- 
bird  that  the  Kauravya,  or  sons  of  Kur,  are  said  in  Indian 
mythology  to  be  born  from  the  egg  laid  by  the  goddess- 
mother  Gran-dhari,  for  she,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  is  the 
goddess  Dharti,  the  goddess  of  the  springs  supplied  with 
water  by  the  vanquished  rain-cloud.  She  is  worshipped  by 
the  Cheroos,  Kharwars,  Santals,  Mundas  and  Ooraons,  and  it 
is  through  these  tribes  that  we  are  able  to  trace  the  origin 
of  the  hawk-headed  Horus,  and  to  show  that  this  myth,  like 
that  of  Ra,  the  god  Ha-hu  of  the  Dosadhs,  the  Magadha 
priests,  came  from  India,  whither  it  had  been  imported  from 
Asia  Minor,  to  Egypt.  The  chief  totems  of  the  Cheroos, 
who,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  ii.,  were  the  chief  rulers  of 
ancient  Magadha,  are  Besra,  the  hawk,  and  Kachchhua,  the 
tortoise,  and  these  totems  are  repeated  among  those  of  the 
Gonds,  Kharwars,  Lobars,  or  iron  workers,  Mundas  and 
Santals,  while  the  Kandhs  or  Khonds,  the  swordsmen 
conquerors  of  Orissa,  call  one  of  their  Gochis  (cow-stalls),  or 
septs,  Besringia,  and  one  of  their  Klambus,  or  sub-septs, 
Besera.^  These  tribes  were  those  who  first  utilised  the 
mineral  wealth  of  Chota  Nagpore,  and  it  is  in  Egyptian 

*  Risley,  Tribts  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  nrpL  li.  App.  I.  pp.  35,  54,  68,  78, 
94,  103,  125. 


xxxviii     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

mythology  that  we  find  the  connection  between  them  and  the 
hawk  explained.  The  hawk  is  the  emblem  of  Hat-hor,  the 
mother  of  Horus,  to  whom  all  mines  are  sacred.  She  was 
worshipped  in  the  Sinai  tic  Peninsula,  the  great  mining 
country  of  Egypt,  as  *  the  sublime  Hat-hor,  queen  of  heaven 
and  earth,  and  the  dark  depths  below,**  and  it  was  there 
that  she  was  associated  with  the  sparrow-hawk  of  Sopt,  the 
lord  of  the  East.  Mr.  Boscawen,  when  inspecting  ancient 
Egyptian  quarries,  found  that  the  hawk  was  depicted  as  a 
guardian  emblem  in  most  of  those  of  an  early  period.  Thus 
we  see  in  this  emblem  of  the  mother-hawk,  as  the  guardian 
goddess  of  the  mining  races,  a  wonderful  instance  of  primaeval 
historical  metaphor  as  a  source  of  totemistic  names.  For 
the  sons  of  the  hawk  were  those  tribes  who  possessed  the 
hawk^s  gift  of  piercing  sight  and  intuitional  observation, 
which  enabled  them  to  discover  the  treasures  hidden  by 
nature  in  the  rocks  beneath  the  surface  of  the  ground.  It 
was  probably  in  Asia  Minor,  where  mining  originated,  that 
they  first  ac(|uired  their  totemistic  name.^  These  tribes  all 
reverence  the  goddess  Dharti,  the  mother  of  the  tortoise 
riuWf  and  they  represent  the  cultivating  yellow  races  who 
pHfireded  the  sons  of  the  ass,  or  the  Ooraons,  the  growers  of 
Unrlvy.  It  was  they  who  introduced  the  earliest  form  of 
plough  cultivation  in  the  growth  of  millets,  the  crops  grown 
by  i\w  (f  onds  of  the  second  immigration,  led  by  Lingal  after 
Iw  Uml  \)iHm  carried  by  the  black  Bindo  bird  to  the  creating 
ffiountairi  of  Mahodeo,  whence  the  rains  followed  the  re- 
tisMMt  of  the  (fonds.*    It  was  these  tribes  who,  after  the 

'  7  III*  inforiiMtion  l»  taken  from  a  letter  by  Mr.  W.  St.  Chad  Boscawen, 
l/i/immf  lit  th«  Ifrilinh  Museum,  on  Oriental  subjects,  to  Mr.  Theodore 
Ikof,  ')>i//U'l  in  an  article  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  Afagazitiet  December 
''^/^  \*\**  <^^i*  '/^4»  Art.  '  On  the  Origin  of  the  Mashonaland  Ruins.' 

>  ^KK  lUMjf  fif.  p.  223. 


PREFACE  xxxix 

fire-worshippers,  ruled  Magadha,  and  this  country,  which 
had,  before  their  arrival,  been  the  land  of  the  fire-god  and 
the  witch-mother  M aga,  became  under  them  the  land  of  the 
god  Vasu,  and  he  is  called  in  the  Mahabharata  the  king  of 
Chedi.^      In   this   name   Chedi   we   find   another  form   of 
Cheroo,  for  a  sept  of  the  Bediyas  of  Behar,  one  of  the  forest 
races,  whose  totem   is  the  squirrel,  is  called  Chirya-mar, 
Chedi-mar  or  Chodi-mar,    meaning  the  bird-killers,^  and 
Chiriya,  the  Hindu  word  for  bird,  is  as  clearly  allied  to  the 
Basque  Cho-ri,  meaning  bird,  as  Vasu,  Vasuki,  or  Basuki  is 
to  the  name  Basque.     Thus  Chirya,  Chedi  and  Chodi  are 
different  words  for  bird,  and  the  land  of  Chedi  means  the 
land  of  the  bird,  and  that  of  Cheroos  the  sons  of  the  bird, 
and  that  this  bird  was  the  hawk  I  shall  now  proceed  to 
show;  for  it  was  the  hawk  which,  in  the  birth  legend  of 
the  fish-god  in  the  Mahabharata,  carried  the  seed  of  life 
from  the  father-god  Vasu  to  the  mother  of  the  sacred  fish, 
Adrika,  meaning  the  rock.^    The  hawk  was  thus  the  parent 
of  Adrika^s  children,   the   twin   fish-gods   Satya-vati,   the 
mother-fish,  and  Matsya,  the  fish-father,  and  of  the  hawk- 
headed  Horus  of  the  Egyptians,  who  was  the  son  of  the 
Southern  goddess  Hat-hor,  meaning  the  house  (hat)  of  Hor. 
The  dwellers  in  the  bird  land  of  Chedi  were  also  called 
Kashu  or  Kushu,  for  in  the  Rigveda  the  king  of  the  Chedi 
is  called  Kasu.^ 

In  Essay  rv.  I  have  shown  that  among  the  Egyptians  the 
vulture  or  storm-bird  ruled  the  year  beginning  with  the 
summer  solstice  and  the  rains  of  northern  India,  and  this 

^  Mahabharata  Ad!  {Adivanfhavaiama)  Parva,  Ixiii.  p.  171. 

*  Risley,  Trihes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.  p.  206. 

*  Mahabharata  Adi  {Adivanskavatarna)  Parva,  Ixiii.  pp.  174,  175. 

*  Rigveda,  viii.  $,  37. 


xl      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

was  the  bird  which,  like  the  hawk-headed  Horus  in  the 
Egyptian  bas-relief  in  the  Louvre,  brought  the  rain  out  of 
the  cloud  to  the  rock-mother,  whence  she  became  the  parents 
of  the  fish-god.  This  year,  ushered  in  by  the  raih-bird,  is 
that  symbolised  in  the  Mahabharata  in  ShishupiOa,  king  of 
Chedi,  the  commander-in-chief  of  the  armies  of  Jarasandha, 
king  of  Magadha.  His  name  means  the  nourisher  (paJa)  of 
children  {shishu\  and  he  is  the  bird-king  of  the  year  of  the 
bird  representing  the  months  of  gestation,  who  was  deposed 
by  Kfishna,  the  black  antelope,  from  his  supremacy  in  the 
council  of  kings,  and  slain  by  him  with  the  discus,  represent- 
ing the  ring  of  the  year  formed  by  a  series  of  months.^ 

But  these  forms,  Chedi,  Chero,  Chori,  Chiriya  are  shown 
by  the  Tamil  form  Chera,  with  its  variant  Kerala,  to  come 
from  an  original  guttural  root,  and  it  is  the  Cheros  or 
Keralas  who,  with  the  Cholas  or  Kolas,  and  the  Pandyas  or 
Pandavas,  form  the  three  parent  races  of  India  in  the  Tamil 
genealogy.  Thus  it  comprises  the  sons  of  the  mountain 
(ko)  Kolas  or  Cholas,  the  sons  of  the  bird  Cheros  or  Keralas,* 
and  the  sons  of  the  sun-antelope  {pandu\  the  Pandyas.* 
The  root  of  the  name  Chero,  and  its  cognate  forms,  was, 
therefore,  clearly  one  in  which  the  ch  was  ArA,  as  in  the 
Akkadian  and  Egyptian  khu^  and  this  must,  from  the 
presence  of  r  in  the  Indian  forms,  have  been  khur.  It  was 
this  which  was  clianged  into  the  Hor  of  Horus,  meaning 
the  supreme  god,  the  magic  bird  who  rules  the  year,  and 
<lirccts  the  march  of  time  by  the  revolutions  of  the  pole. 

'  Mahabharata  Sabha  {Shishupdla  badha)  Parva,  xl.-xlv.  pp.  112-124. 

'''  K<^rala  is  an  ancient  name  for  Malabar,  hence  it  was  from  Malabar,  the 
wcktcrn  coast  of  India,  that  the  K6ralas,  the  sons  of  the  bird,  the  Shus,  used 
to  start  for  their  sea  voyage.  Wilson,  Glossary  of  Judicial  and  Revenue  Htmis^ 
London,  1855,  p.  401. 

*  Caldwell,  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  Dravidian  Languages^  P«  *5« 


PREFACE  xli 

But,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  i.,  these  Northern  aspirated 
gutturals  became  among  the  Dravidian  races,  who  formed 
the  sounds  of  the  Indian  Sanskrit,  sibilants,  and  hence  khur 
became  shu^  and  the  process  of  the  change  is  shown  by  the 
name  Seori  and  Sauri  assumed  by  the .  Orissa  Cheroos,  and 
from  tliis  analysis  we  see  that  the  original  Kauravyas  of 
India  were  Khur-avyas,  or  sous  of  the  bird  Khur;  and  it 
was  they  who  formed  the.  religion  founded  on  the  worship 
of 'the  mother-bird,  the  father-pole,  and  the  rain-sun  of  the 
summer  solstice,  whicli  I  have  analysed  in  Essay  iv.,^  which 
was  the  religion  of  the  Minsean-Saba&ans  of  Southern  Arabia, 
and  of  the  mining  races  of  Mashonaland.  They  were  fol- 
lowed by  the  sons  of  the  antelope,  the  Pandavas,  the  sons 
of  the  seed-grain  worshipped  at  Eleusis,  and  both  they  and 
the  Kauravyas  were  descendants  of  the  fish  mother-goddess 
Satyavati,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  was  the  daughter  of  the 
hawk.  Thus  we  see  how,  in  both  Egyptian  and  Akkadian, 
XrAi^,  the  bird,  becomes  kha^  the  fish,  and  t)ie  sacred  hawk  is 
changed  into  the  Ibis,  or  water-bird,  which  depicts  the 
sound  khu  in  Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  while  the  symbol  for 
kha  is  the  fish.  This  name  of  the  fish-god  appears  in  that 
of  the  Kharwars,  and  of  the  still  more  aboriginal  Kharias, 
who  are  parent  tribes  of  the  Cheroos,  and  include  among 
their  totems  Aind  or  Indu,  an  eel.  This,  in  the  list  of  the 
totems  of  the  Kharias,  appears  with  an  alternative  form 
Dung-dung,  of  which  Aind  or  Indu,  meaning  the  son  of  the 
drop  (sap  or  essence). (//iJm),  the  life-giving  water,  is  ap- 
parently a  translation,  and  both  Dung-dung  and  Aind 
appear  among  the  totems  of  the  Mundas.  The  totem  Aind 
is  one  common  not  only  to  the  Kharias,  Khan^^ars  and 
Moondas,  but  also  to  the  land-holding  Rautias,  the  Asuras, 

J  Essay  iv.  pp.  347,  348.  . 


xlii       RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

(workers  in  metal),  the  cow-keeping  Goalas,  the  Pans  (weavers 
and  basket-makers),  and  the  Santals.  Under  the  form  Ainduar 
it  is  a  totem  of  the  mountain  Korwas,  and  under  that  of 
Aindwar,  a  totem  of  the  Behar  Goalas,  and  the  Goraits  or 
boundary  guardians.  These  last  also  use  the  alternative 
form  Induar,  which  is  also  that  used  by  the  Nageshurs,  or 
worshippers  of  the  Nag,  the  cloud-snake,  the  Turis,  or 
basket-makers,  the  Chiks,  a  branch  of  the  Pans,  the  Lobars, 
or  workers  in  iron,  and  the  Ooraons.^ 

From  this  last  it  is  clear  that  it  was  the  races  who  fed 
their  cattle  on  the  mountains,  whence  the  rivers  rose,  from 
which  they,  as  the  sons  of  the  hawk,  got  the  metallic  ores, 
and — as  the  sons  of  the  mother-cloud,  the  storm-bird — the 
osiers  and  bamboos  to  make  their  baskets,  who  first  called 
themselves  the  sons  of  the  eel,  the  fish-god  of  the  sons  of 
the  rivulets  rising  in  the  mountain  springs  sacred  to  the 
goddess-mother  Dharti.  The  word  eel  is  the  Icelandic  off, 
the  Grerman  oaZ,  the  Finnish  ilja^  and  it  becomes  the 
Sanskrit  ahi^  the  encircling  snake,  the  Greek  echis^  which,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  in.,  is  the  parent-god  of  the  Greek  Achaioi. 
In  the  Finnish  il-ja  the  first  syllable  is  the  sign  of  divinity, 
and  it  appears  in  the  name  of  Il-marinen,  the  constellation 
of  the  Great  Bear,  who  is  one  of  the  triad  of  gods  Vaina- 
moinen,  Ilmarinen  and  Ukko  in  the  Kalevala.  Ukko,  the 
thunder-god,  whose  history  I  have  traced  in  Essay  in.,  being 
the  offspring  of  Vainamoinen,  the  god  of  moisture,  the  rain- 
god,  and  the  Bear,  or  *  eternal  forger,'  Il-marinen,^  and  the 
//in  Il-marinen  is  the  Finnic  form  of  the  name  of  the  original 

^  Risley,  Trihes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  pp.  14,  259,  337.  Aind, 
Ainduar,  Aindwir,  Dung-dung,  Induar.  See  also  the  lists  of  the  totems  of 
the  tribes  named,  vol.  ii.  App.  i. 

^  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic,  chap.  xvi.  pp.  246,  247  ;  De  Gubematis 
Die  Thiere,  German  translation,  by  Hartmann,  pp.  113,  114. 


PREFACE  xliii 

mother-goddess  of  time,  Ida,  Ila  or  Ira,  the  year  of  the 
three  (iru)  seasons  forget!  by  the  revolutions  of  the  Great 
Bear,  the  Greek  virgin  goddess-mother  Artemis,  the  Bear- 
mother,  who  was,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  vi.,  the  Great 
Bear.  It  was  these  Finns  who  called  the  eel  the  son  (ja)  of 
II  who  apparently  introduced  the  form  //  or  El  which  is 
universally  used  for  the  sign  of  the  divinity  in  Semitic 
countries.  It  was  these  people  who  looked  on  the  fish  Kha, 
or  Khar,  as  the  offspring  of  the  bird  Khu  or  Khur,  and  that 
Khar  was  the  original  form  of  the  word  is  shown  in  the  M ord- 
ain and  Vogul  forms  kal  and  khaly  meaning  fish,  used  by  the 
nations  who  changed  r  into  l,^  But  I  have  already  shown 
that  the  form  khur^  khu,  for  bird,  becomes  in  Dravidianised 
Sanskrit  shu,  and  in  the  same  way  the  original  khar,  the 
fish,  becomes  in  the  mythology  of  the  Souris  of  Orissa,  who 
were  Cheroos  in  Behar,  sal,  and  it  is  this  word  which  appears 
in  the  Souri  totem  the  Sal-rishi,  or  fish-antelope  (rtshya), 
which  is,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  their  parent-god. 
Tills  long  analysis  shows  us  that  the  sons  of  the  burning 
mountain  (gwr),  or  household  fire  {ghur\  the  sons  of  the 
bird  (A7iMr),  and  the  sons  of  the  fish  {khar\  formed  the 
race  of  the  yellow  Ibai-erri,  or  sons  of  the  rivers,  who  intro- 
duced the  cultivation  of  the  Northern  cereals,  and  founded 
the  ritual  of  Demeter,  the  barley-mother,  worshipped  at 
Eleusis  in  Greece,  and  by  the  Kabiri  in  Thrace  and  Asia 
Minor.  They  are  all  bound  together  by  one  chain  of 
historical  mythology,  which  shows  how  the  sons  of  the 
household  fire  ruled  the  land,  which  was  made  wealthy  by 
the  mining  sons  of  the  hawk,  and  fruitful  by  the  rains 
brought  by  the  mother-bird ;  and  it  was  these  rains  which 
descended  from  the  mountains  as  the  irrigating  streams, 

^  Lenonnant,  Chaldaan  AfagiCf  chap.  xxii.  p.  202. 


xliv     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

whose  banks  and  waters  were  peopled  by  the  sons  of  tlie 
fish-god,  who  grew  millets  and  cereal  crops  in  the  fertile 
lands  indicated  by  the  father-antelope,  who  was  bom  froiO> 
the  short  sweet  grass  called  Kusha,  to  show  the  sons  of  th^ 
corn-seed  the  most  fertile  spots  in  the  lands  watered  by  tlw^ 
rivers  of  the  fish-god,  which  were  to  become  the  tortoise 
earth.     It  also  shows  that  these  ])eople  came  to  India,  an^ 
survive  in  the  races  known  as  the  Khati  and  Jats  in  th^ 
Punjab,  and  Khatiawar  in  the  West,  and  as  the  Gautuma^ 
of  Eastern    India.      They  are  also   represented    in   their* 
unamalgamated  form  by  the  tribes  who,^  as  I   show,  still 
preserve  among  their  totems  the  bird  and  the  river-fish,  the 
eel.     It  was  they  who  became  afterwards  the  Shus,  and  who 
founded  the  empire  of  the  Kushika,  characterised,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  iii.,^  by  the  fonnation  of  castes  like  those  of  the 
Kurmi,  cultivators,  the  Teli,  oil-sellei*s,  and  others,  based  not 
on  community  of  birth,  worship,  or  common  residence,  but 
on  community  of  function. 

Having  shown  clearly  the  liistorical  lessons  to  be  learned 
from  the  variant  forms  of  the  three  Eleusinian  gods,  I  must 
now  explain  the  no  less  important  information  to  be  gathered 
from  the  ritual  of  the  Eleusinian  festival  in  which  they 
were  worshipped.  Only  those  initiated  were  allowed  to 
take  part  either  in  the  Eleusinian  mysteries  or  the  Indian 
Soma  sacrifice,  in  which  the  mother-cow  and  the  mother- 
plant  Soma  was  adored,  and  which,  like  the  Eleusinian 
festival,  was  instituted  by  the  yellow  trading  sons  of  the 
barley-mother,  the  Hindu  Vaishya  or  Shus.  In  both,  the 
ceremonies  were  strikingly  similar.  The  initiation  of  the 
Mastai,  or  penitents,  at  Eleusis  began  with  the  confession  of 
sins,  but  the  first  rites  of  the  Indian  Soma  sacrifice  tell  of  a 

^  Essay  in.  pp.  310,  311. 


PREFACE  xlv 

much  earlier  age  of  religious  development,  forming  a  transi- 
tion link  between  the  worship  of  the  winnowed  grain  at  the 
old  harvest  festival  and  the  Greek  confessional.     As  in  the 
harvest  festival  an  enclosed  place  was  railed  off  from  the 
threshing-floor  for  the  winnowing  of  the  grain,  so  in  the 
Soma  sacrifice,  where  the  sacrificer  was.  the  victim,  symboli- 
CfUly  offered,  he  began  the  sacrifice  in  an  enclosure  made  of 
Onats   to   the   north  of  the  sacrificial  area.     Into  this  he, 
^ittended  by  the  barber,  whose  importance  in  early  Kushite 
ritual  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iir.,^  entered  by  a  door  on  the 
^ast  side,  sacred  to  the  sun.     He  there  cut  his  own  nails,  and 
^hen  took  up,  one  after  another,  two  stalks  of  sacrificial 
^usha  grass,  placing  them  by  the  side  of  one  hair  on  each 
^ide  of  his  beard,  and  dropping  the  severed  grass  and  hair, 
«s  he  cut  them,  into  the  bath  in  which  he  was  to  complete 
Tiis  purification.     The  barber  then  cut  off  the  rest  of  his 
hair  and  beard,  except  the  crest  lock  at  the  top  of  his  head, 
still  religiously  preserved  by  all  men  of  the  yellow  race,  from 
the  Chinese  to  the  Indian  Mundas,  and  for  this  he  used  a 
copper  razor,  thus   marking  the   ceremony  as  one   of  the 
Copper  Age  which  preceded  that  of  Bronze.*    From  the  time 
when  the  shaving  began  till  the  end  of  the  sacrifice  the 
sacrificer  had  to  forego  all  food  except  fast-milk  (vrata\  and 
this  to  make  himself  one  of  the  brotherhood  of  the  sons  of 
the  cow,  the  Vratya,  or  children  of  the  same  stock  described 
in  the  Laws  of  Manu,^  who  are  called  in  the  Mahabharata 
the  Virata,  or  worshippers  of  the  father-god  as  the  Viru  or 
sign  of  virile  energy.     Further  evidence  of  the  connection 
between  the  cutting  of  the  hair  and  that  of  the  com  or 

^  Essay  iii.  p.  279. 

'  Eggeling,  Saf,  Brdh,  iii.   I,  2,   1-9;  ii.  6,  4,  5-7;  S.B.E.  vol.    xxvi. 
pp.  5-7  ;  xii.  p.  450 ;  also  vol.  xii.  Introductory  Note,  pp.  1-2. 
'  Biihler,  Manu^  x.  20;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxv.  pp.  405,  406. 


xlvi      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TBIES 

mother-grass  is  given  in  the  Greek  Kovpa^  a  form  of  Koure 
and  Kore,  meaning  the  cutting  of  grass  or  hair,  and  the 
thought  running  through  the  whole  ceremony  is  evidently 
founded  on  the  primaeval  worship  of  the  grass  or  grain-seed 
as  the  god  of  life,  the  parent  of  the  grain  cut  from  the 
mother-earth  as  her  hair,  and  consecrated  in  the  baptismal 
bath  of  the  dewy  atmosphere  to  the  rain-father  as  the  seed 
of  the  future  year.  It  was  only  when  the  old  crop  was  off 
the  ground,  and  the  hair  and  nails  of  the  sacrificer  were  cut, 
that  the  cornfield  and  his  body  were  fit  to  produce  the  crop 
grown  from  the  consecrated  seed ;  and  the  tillage  necessary  to 
fit  them  for  this  function  was  useless  till  the  earth  and  the 
body  of  the  sacrificer  were  sanctified  by  the  rains  and 
baptismal  bath,  and  thus  endued  with  the  life-giving  power 
symbolised  in  the  latter.  The  tillage  of  the  soil,  and  its 
clearance  from  the  old  crop  and  noxious  weeds  were  sym- 
bolised in  the  Soma  festival  by  the  confession  of  sin  made 
by  the  sacrificer  before  he  and  his  wife  bathed  together  at 
the  close  of  the  sacrifice,^  and  by  the  confession  of  the 
penitent  Mastai  at  the  Eleusinian  mysteries.  This  pre- 
liminary eradication  of  evil  by  the  shaving  and  confession 
was  in  both  festivals  followed  by  the  bath  of  regeneration, 
called  in  Sanskrit  dlkshu,  or  the  consecration,  described 
in  Essay  iii.,*  which  gave  the  blessing  of  the  rain  father-god 
to  the  sacrificer,  and  made  him  his  son.  But  when  the  ritual 
had  travelled  from  India  to  Greece  the  seed-grain  mother  of 
the  race  of  corn-growers,  and  of  Soma,  the  creating  (sii) 
plant  grown  on  the  mother-mountain,  had  become  the  earth- 
tortoise,  resting  on  the  mother-ocean,  and  hence  in  Greece 
the  initiated  had  to  bathe  in  the  sea.     In  both  cases  the 

^  Eggeling,  Saf.  Brdh,  iv.  4,  $,  22,  23 ;  S.B.K  voL  xxvi.  p.  385. 
2  Essay  ill.  pp.  309,  310 ;  iv.  p.  367. 


PREFACE  xlvii 

bath  was  the  prelude  to  the  new  birth,  called   in  Greek 
Kodapffi^j    and    the   number  of    immersions  required    in 
Greece  to  clear  away  the  last  traces  of  the  slough  of  sin 
varied  with  the  degree  of  guilt  confessed  to  by  the  newly 
baptized  penitent.       Also,  as  in   the   Soma  sacrifice,  the 
sacrificer  was  restricted  to  milk  diet,  so  in  the  Eleusinian 
mysteries  the  penitents  could  only  eat  the  holy  food,  which 
I  shall  describe  presently.     The  object  of  this  rule  was  in 
both  cases   to   prevent  the   entry  into   the   body  of  any 
impurities  which  might  make  the  new  birth,  and  the  total 
change  of    nature   wrought    by   the   prescribed   diet  and 
consecrating  ceremonies,  impossible.     In  Greece,  as  in  India, 
the  connection  of  the  festival  with  that  of  the  national 
festival  of  the  ploughing  race,  who  called  themselves  the 
sons  of  the  cow,  is  obvious,  for  in  Greece  it  was  held  in  the 
month  consecrated  to  the  ploughing-ox  called  Boe-dromion, 
or  the  course  (dromos)  of  the  ox  (Bous),     Both  at  Eleusis 
and  in  the  Soma  festival  the  baptismal  bath  was  followed 
by  sacrifices.     In  the  Soma  sacrifice  eleven  cakes  were  offered 
to  Agni- Vishnu,  the  twin  gods  of  generation,  the  god  of 
fire,  and  of  the  time  of  gestation,  rice-porridge  to  Aditya, 
the  bird-mother  of  the  Kushite  race,  and  heated  milk  to  the 
three  Upasads,  or  mother-seasons,  the  object  aimed  at  in  these 
sacrifices  being  to  give  a  new  body  to  the  sacrificer.^     These 
were  followed  in  the  Soma  sacrifice  by  the  slaying  of  the 
eleven  animal  victims  offered  to  the  Ashvins,  or  twin  gods 
of  day  and  night.     In  Greece,  where  the  sacrifice  had  be- 
come entirely  individual,  instead  of  being,  like  the  Soma 
sacrifice,  a  combined  personal  and  national  ceremony,  each 
penitent  had  to  offer  a  pig,  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,^ 

'  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,   iii.    i,    3,    1-3;  Hi.   4,  4,  I  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi. 
pp.  12  note  3,  104  note  3.  '  Essay  iii.  p.  181. 


xlviii    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

was  the  animal  always  offered  in  Greece  by  offenders  to 
cleanse  them  from  guilt,  and  reconcile  them  to  the  mother- 
earth,  to  whom  pigs,  the  totemistic  parents  of  the  first  fire- 
worshippers,  were  sacred. 

In  the  Soma  sacrifice  the  Soma  distilled  from  the  holy 
plant  was  poured  in  libations,  and  drunk  by  the  priests,  who 
ate  the  offered  food,  but  in  Greece  the  priests  gave  the 
penitents  the  sacred  food  and  drink.  The  declaration  made 
by  each  penitent  at  the  close  of  the  ceremony  explains  both 
the  ritual  and  its  meaning.  Each  of  them  had  to  say :  '  I 
have  fasted,  and  have  drunk  the  KVK€<li>v^  made  of  flour 
and  water,  and  pounded  mint,  the  bread  and  water  of  life 
mixed  with  the  sap  of  the  green  mother-tree  ;  '  I  have  taken 
from  the  Kurrq '  the  seed  -  grain  jar ;  *  after  tasting '  the 
sacred  cakes,  the  bread  of  life  taken  from  the  kio-ttj^  *  I 
have  placed  them  in  the  KoKaOo^^  the  basket,  that  is,  the 
Ijiknos  or  Sare,  the  winnowing  basket,  *and  from  the 
KoKciOo^  (I  have  placed  them)  in  the  KLarrj,''  ^  From  this 
it  is  clear  that  the  sacrificer,  having  drunk  from  the  cup 
the  elementary  seed  of  vital  power  dwelling  in  the  blessed 
bread  and  water,  took  the  young  god,  the  seed  of  the  new 
life,  the  cakes  baked  in  the  generating  and  cleansing  fire 
from  the  mother-jar,  and  partook  of  his  body,  thus  incor- 
porating into  himself  the  divine  seed.  What  was  left  he 
placed  in  the  winnowing  basket,  to  be  there  cleansed  from 
any  taint  it  might  have  received  by  being  touched  by  him 
before  he  was  made  holy  by  eating  it,  and  he  returned  it, 
after  its  purification,  to  the  mother-jar.- 

1  Hatch,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1888,  Lect.  x.  pp.  287,  288  ;  Encyclopedia 
Britannicat  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  'Mysteries,'  by  Professor  W.  M.  Ramsay, 
vol.  xvii.  p.  127  ;  Clem.  Alex.  Protrcp.  ii.  p.  18. 

^  The  original  belief  in  bread  as  the  seed  of  life,  and  the  symbol  and  Son 
of  God  is  perpetuated  in  the  Hebrew  custom  of  breaking  and  distributing 


PREFACE  xUx 

In  this  analysis  of  the  myths,  and  the  most  significant  of 
the  Greek  and  Roman  ceremonies  of  the  several  stages  of 
the  sacramental  sacrifice  of  the  corn-growing  races,  we  find  a 
complete  history  of  the  union  of  the  three  parent  tribes,  a 
history  which  would  doubtless  be  much  more  clear  to  us 
than  it  is  at  present  if  we  could  see,  as  the  Greek  penitents 
did,  the  scenes  of  the  myth  of  Kore  acted  before  them. 
The  evidence  shows  us  that  the  confederated  tribes  were  the 
sons  of  the  fire-god,  the  revolving  pole,  and  his  two  wives, 
his  mother  and  daughter,  the  mother-earth  and  the  seed- 
grain,  and  we  can  trace  the  development  of  the  national 
ritual  as  it  passed  from  India  to  Phrygia,  and  from  Phrygia 
back  to  India,  and  from  thence  when  the  ritual  of  the 
regenerating  sacrifice  of  the  Semite  -  Kushites  had  been 
evolved,  we  trace  it  in  an  altered  form  to  Greece  as  the 
sacrifice  of  the  Greater  Eleusinia  celebrated  in  Boe-dromion, 
the  month  of  the  course  (dromos)  of  the  ox  {Bous\  the 
month  of  the  autumnal  equinox,  which  succeeded  the  winter 
solstice  as  the  time  when  the  barley-growing  races  of  Syria 
b^an  their  year.  But  this  last  importation  had  been 
preceded  by  the  earlier  sacrifice  of  the  Dorians,  sons  of  the 
Dor  or  Tur,  the  pole,  and  also  the  sons  of  the  twin  gods, 

bread  at  the  beginning  of  every  meal.  The  bread  is  broken  and  distributed 
by  the  £iLther  of  the  family,  or  whoever  in  his  place  says  the  grace  or  prayec 
of  consecration  before  meat.  It  also  appears  among  the  beliefs  of  Germany, 
where  the  peasant  women  think  it  sacrilege  to  place  the  naked  foot  on  a  loaf. 
They  tell  the  story  of  how  a  girl  who  had  walked  barefoot  to  market,  and 
was  putting  on  her  stockings  before  entering  the  town,  placed  her  naked  foot 
on  one  of  the  loaves  she  was  carrying  to  prevent  it  being  soiled,  and  was  at 
once  swallowed  up  by  the  earth.  The  same  fate  befell  a  mythical  lady, 
Bridget,  whose  story  is  told  to  account  for  the  sanctity  of  a  well  called 
Biittenbronn,  near  Landeck,  on  the  Kaiserstuhl  in  Baden.  The  well  is  said 
to  have  been  found  miraculously  when  Lady  Bridget  was  swallowed  up  as  a 
ponishment  for  having  used  the  loaves  she  was  taking  for  distribution  to  the 
poor  as  stepping-stones  over  a  muddy  bit  of  road.  (Wolffe,  Rambles  in  the 
Bhuk  Forest^  Longmans,  1890,  chap,  xviii.  pp.  251,  252.) 

iv 


1         RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

who  were  first  Day  and  Night,  and  afterwards  the  stars 
Castor  and  Pollux.  This  was  preserved  in  the  mysteries  of 
February  called  Anthesterion,  or  the  month  of  the  flower- 
goddess,  and  of  the  Saturnalia  of  the  Indian  Naga  races  whose 
customs  were,  as  I  show  in  Essays  in.  and  vi.,  brought  to 
Greece  by  those  who  were  reputed  in  mythic  history  to  be 
the  voyagers  in  the  heavenly  ship  Argo,  and  by  the  overland 
traders,  who  brought  by  the  way  of  Harran  (the  road)  and 
the  Euphrates  valley  Indian  commodities  and  customs  to 
Europe,  and  among  these  last  was  the  ritualistic  use  of 
incense  taken  from  the  mother-tree  Leda,  the  incense-tree, 
the  mother  of  Castor  and  Pollux,  which  was,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  iii.,^  originally  the  Indian  Salai-tree  {BoswelUa 
thurifera).  These  trading  races,  the  founders  of  the  worship 
of  the  heavenly  twins,  and  the  first  astronomical  measurers 
of  time,  were  the  people  who  believed  in  the  divinity  of 
pairs,  and  in  the  origin  of  life  from  the  union  of  the  male 
principle  symbolised  by  the  pole  or  Tur,  the  Ashera  or 
rain-pole  of  the  Jews,  with  the  female  represented  by  the 
mother-bird,  the  Akkadian  Khu,  and  the  Hindu  Shu, 
whence  they  got  their  name  of  Saus.  As  a  result  of  the 
transfer  of  the  origin  of  life  from  the  mother  to  the  united 
pair  they  made  the  male  and  female  trees  of  the  date-palm 
the  Babylonian  tree  of  life  their  parent-tree  instead  of  the 
bisexual  fig-tree.  This  new  parent-tree  became  in  mythic 
history  Tamar,  the  date-palm,  the  second  wife  of  Judah, 
after  Shua,  the  mother-bird,  and  Vala-rama,  the  son  of 
Rohini,  the  red  cow,  the  star  Aldebaran,  whose  cognisance 
was  the  date-palm.  They  also,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iv., 
began  their  year  with  the  heliacal  rising  of  Sirius  at  the 
summer  solstice.     Starting  from  the  Indian  western  port  of 

^  Essay  III.  pp.  300,  301. 


PREFACE  U 

Dwaraka,  the  modem  Ila-pura,  the  city  of  Ila,  Ida  or  Ira, 
the  mountain  and  river-goddess  of  the  three  (iru)  seasons. 
They  instituted  the  world-wide  maritime  trade  of  the 
PhcBnicians,  or  red  men,  the  sons  of  the  united  races  de- 
scended from  the  twin  sons  of  Tamar,  Perez  and  Zerah. 
The  latter,  marked  with  the  red  thread,^  was  the  father  of 
Dara,  the  antelope,  whose  history  I  have  traced  in  Essay  v., 
called  Darda,  the  son  of  Mahol,  or  the  great  god,  and 
described  as  one  of  the  wisest  of  men  before  Solomon.* 
Dara  was  the  ancestor  of  the  great  Dardanian  race  of  Troy, 
of  which  Paris,  the  Sanskrit  Pani,  the  trader,  was  the 
representative,  and  of  the  race  of  the  same  name  placed  by 
Herodotus  ^  on  the  Gyndes,  an  Armenian  tributary  of  the 
Tigris,  who  were  the  barley-growing  sons  of  the  antelope 
(dara).  From  Perez,  the  fire-god,  the  brother  of  Zerah, 
sprang  the  royal  race  of  Ram,^  the  sons  of  Ra,  the  sun-god. 
Their  first  settlements  outside  India  were  on  the  island 
called  by  them,  after  their  father-god,  Tur-os,  the  modem 
Bahrein,  the  headquarters  of  the  pearl  fishery  of  the  Persian 
Gulf.  This  was  the  holy  island  of  Dilmun,  where  the  fish- 
god  of  the  Akkadians  £n-zag,  meaning  the  first-bom  (zoff) 
of  the  almighty  {en\  first  landed,  and  taught  civilisation  to 
the  Euphratean  races.^  He,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,®  was  in 
India  the  Sal-rishi,  or  fish-antelope,  the  god  also  called  by 
the  Akkadians  and  Assyrians  Sala-manu,  the  fish,  the 
prototype  of  the  Jewish  Solomon.  It  was  thence  that  the 
sons  of  Tur  made  their  way  to  Egypt  after  establishing,  as 
I  show  in  Essays  iv.  and  v.,  their  rule  in  Southern  Arabia 

*  Gen.  xxviil  38.  ^  I  Chron.  ii,  6  ;  i  Kings  iv.  3a 

*  Herod,  i.  189.  *  i  Chron.  ii.  10, 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect  ii.  p.  114  note  i. 

*  Essay  ill.  pp.  285,  286. 


J 


lii       RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

and  in  Egypt.  There  they  founded  the  government  of  the 
Kushite  kings,  who  transmitted  to  their  successors,  on  the 
throne  of  Southern  and  Northern  Egypt  the  sign  of  the 
Urseus  snake,  worn  on  the  king'^s  forehead  as  a  sign  of  his 
royal  dignity.  It  was  ako  from  the  Persian  Gulf  that  they 
went  to  Ur,  and  afterwards  to  Harran  on  the  Euphrates, 
meaning  Kharran,  the  road,  and  there  founded  the  trade 
route  through  South-western  Asia,  between  the  Persian 
Gulf  and  the  Mediterranean  ports,  whence  Asiatic  products 
were  disseminated  through  Europe.  It  was  in  Harran  that 
they  solved  the  astronomical  and  ethical  problems  which 
enabled  them  to  mectsure  in  the  heavens  the  paths  of  the 
moon  and  sun,  and  thus  calculate  the  lunar  year  of  thirteen 
months  described  in  Essay  iv.,  and  to  cement  the  union  of 
the  two  races  called  the  two  Ashes  (eper),  forming  the 
tribe  of  Ephraim.  This  alliance  united  the  Eastern  and 
Western  races  together  by  the  binding  rite  of  circumcision, 
as  described  in  Essay  v.  It  was  this  rite  which  made  all  the 
worshippers  of  the  Nun,  or  spirit  father-god,  the  father  of 
Hosh-ia,  or  Joshua,  their  leader,  members  of  the  Semitic 
brotherhood  who  had  been  previously  united  in  the  East  as 
the  sons  of  the  cow,  the  star  Rohini  and  the  ram-god,  by 
the  regenerating  baptismal  bath.  These  Semite  traders,  by 
taking  under  their  protection  the  whole  maritime  and  land 
traffic  of  South-western  Asia,  became  rulers  of  the  countries 
on  the  Indian  Ocean  and  Mediterranean,  and  thus  estab- 
lished the  universal  empire  of  the  confederated  Semite  tribes, 
one  branch  of  the  confederacy  being  descended  from  Ra,  the 
sun-god,  the  father  (Ab)  Ram,  and  Sara,  the  grain-mother, 
and  the  other ^  from  the  anthropomorphic  fire-drill,  the  pole 
Tur,  united  with  the  mother-earth. 

Their  rule,  which,  like  others  which  have  since  succeeded 


PREFACE  liii 

it,  began  with  the  fairest  prospects  of  creating  a  heaven  on 
earth,  ended  in  the  grinding  and  intolerable  tyranny  which 
led  to  the  great  Aryan  revolt,  described  in  Essay  vi.,  led,  as 
I  have  there  shown,  by  the  wine-drinking  sons  of  Semele, 
the  vine-goddess,  and  the  races  who  substituted  the  solar  for 
the  lunar-solar  year,  and  who  thought  free  and  living  life 
more  divine  than  ascetic  devotion  to  metaphysical  abstrac- 
tions and  cast-iron  rules.  This  Aryan  conquest  was,  in  the 
land  where  the  first  and  most  signal  victories  of  the  refor- 
mers  were  gained,  the  parent  of  Greek  poetry  and  art,  and 
ultimately  of  the  Greek  drama,  but  the  spirit  of  indi- 
viduality, which  was  the  moving  power  of  this  new  creative 
impulse,  was  the  indirect  cause  of  the  death,  or  rather  of 
the  transformation  of  the  old  historical  myth.  The  conquest 
made  by  the  new  rulers  differed  fundamentally  from  most  of 
those  which  preceded  it,  for  both  the  Aryan  rulers  and  the 
rank  and  file  of  their  army  belonged  to  those  North-western 
races  who  based  property  on  individual  and  family  posses- 
sion, and  not  on  the  communal  system  of  the  Southern 
village  races.  Hence  individuals  were  always  much  more 
important  people  in  the  North-west  than  in  the  South, 
and  this  national  tendency  towards  individual  freedom  was 
increased  by  the  warlike  habits  of  an  age  when  battles  were 
chiefly  personal  combats.  The  soldiers  of  a  race  of  warriors 
to  whom  military  glory  and  personal  distinction  were  the 
great  objects  of  ambition  could  not  be  contented  with  the 
historical  methods  of  the  races  who  looked  on  history  as  a 
help  to  national  progress,  and  not  as  a  record  of  individual 
prowess.  The  Northern  conquerors  did  not  care  to  be 
entombed  in  histories  which  did  not,  like  the  historical 
songs  of  their  own  clan-bards,  record  their  names,  and  thus 
preserve    the    memory   of    each  individual   chief.      These 


Uv        RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Northern  races  were  also  intensely  proud  of  their  families, 
and  in  every  ruling  family,  or  gens,  the  ashes,  deeds  and 
names  of  their  ancestors  were  preserved  in  the  ancestral 
home,  and  in  the  songs  and  genealogies  compiled  by  the 
family  and  clan-bards.  These  bards,  called  in  India  the 
Maghadas,  or  sons  of  the  witch-mother,  Magha,  superseded 
in  the  new  age  the  hereditary  Asipu  of  the  Assyrians  and  the 
Prashai§tri,  or  trading  priests  of  the  Kushite  ritual ;  and  it 
was  they  who  first,  by  genealogies  and  ballads,  and  after- 
wards when  syllabic  characters  were  introduced  by  written 
annals,  changed  history  into  an  account  of  the  deeds  done 
by  the  Gentile  ancestors  called  by  the  names  they  bore 
when  alive.  It  was  they  who,  from  the  old  mythic  stories, 
framed  the  first  national  epics,  such  as  the  primitive  forms 
of  the  Kalevcda  and  the  Nibelungmi  Lkd^  and  of  the  story 
of  the  Akkadian  Gilgames,  who  became  the  Greek  Hercules. 
Though  the  writers  of  those  epics,  which,  like  those  of  the 
Hindus,  are  based  on  the  national  history  of  the  land  where 
they  were  written,  preserved  the  means  of  reproducing  the 
old  stories,  either  by  retaining  the  original  names  or  by  accu- 
rately translating  into  the  language  of  the  conquerors  the 
names  given  to  the  heroes  of  the  conquered  race,  yet  this 
original  meaning  was,  owing  to  the  altered  spirit  of  the  age, 
gradually  forgotten,  and  these  stories  became,  not  only  to  the 
common  people,  but  to  poets,  dramatists,  and  philosophers, 
tales  told  of  individuals.  When  they  were  thus  transmogri- 
fied, and  when  the  retailers  of  mythology  told  how  Kronos, 
the  god  of  Time,  ate  his  own  children,  and  (Edipus  married 
his  mother  Jocasta,  and  related  what  seemed  to  be  the 
numerous  other  evil  deeds  of  the  gods  and  heroes,  their 
stories  were  naturally  denounced  by  all  moralists  from  Plato 
downwards,  as  demoralising  and  absurd.     It  is  only  when 


PREFACE  Iv 

they  are  traced  up  to  their  original  sources,  and  when  the 
real  meanings  of  their  authors  are  discovered,  that  they  are 
found  to  be  reliable  records  of  past  history,  which  do  not 
tell  us  that  our  ancestors  were  fools  who  believed  in  stupid 
fables  as  inspired  utterances,  but  that  they  were  earnest  and 
intelligent  workers  who  transmitted  to  their  posterity  in 
these  stories  .the  accumulated  results  of  their  experience. 
One  most  unfortunate  result  of  this  Aryan  travesty  of  ancient 
history  is  to  be  found  in  the  notions  of  the  origin  of  the  idea 
of  property  to  which  it  has  given  birth.  Thus  many  writers 
start  with  the  assumption  that  property  was  originally  indi- 
vidual,  whereas  the  history  of  village  communities  shows  that 
where  society  was  first  founded  by  the  hunting  races,  land  did 
not  belong  to  individuals  but  to  the  tribe,  which  occupied 
definite  areas  as  their  tribal  hunting  grounds.  When  hunt- 
ing gave  place  to  agriculture,  and  definite  village  areas  were 
formed  in  the  tribal  territory,  the  ownership  of  these  tracts 
passed  to  the  village  community,  subject  to  the  control  of 
the  united  council  of  the  confederated  villages.  Neither 
under  this  form  of  government  nor  in  that  of  the  hunting 
races,  was  any  right  to  private  property  recognised,  for  the 
game  killed  by  the  tribal  hunters  was  divided  among  the 
whole  tribe,  and  the  crops  grown  were,  when  gathered,  stored 
in  the  village  barns,  and  used  to  supply  the  materials  for  the 
village  meals,  which  were  all  eaten  in  common.  Individual 
rights  had  no  protection  beyond  those  given  by  the  village 
and  federal  councils.  Those  who  were  out-casted  by  these 
tribunals  passed  out  of  the  protection  of  the  community 
and  could  obtain  neither  shelter  nor  land  for  tillage,  except 
as  wanderers  in  the  wilderness,  unless  they  were  reinstated  in 
their  old  confederacy,  or  obtained  entrance  into  another. 
Individual  property  in  land  first  appeared  in  Southern  coun- 


A 


Ivi      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tries  when  the  confederacy  of  the  fire  and  sun  worshipping 
Maghadas  and  Gautumas  entered  India  and  introduced  the 
semi-feudal  system,  which  gave  to  the  king  and  the  primaeval 
chiefs  appointed  by  him  a  right  to  a  definite  share  of  land 
in  each  village.  Under  this  form  of  government  the  former 
joint- village  proprietors  became,  in  respect  of  the  royal  lands, 
serfs  of  the  crown,  who  were  required  to  till  it,  sow  and  reap 
the  crops,  and  store  the  produce  in  the  royal  barns,  and 
also  to  repair  the  royal  residences.  But  apart  from  these 
duties,  the  old  village  organisation  remained  intact,  and  no 
man  who  had  not  a  definite  place  among  the  members  of  the 
dominant  tribe,  from  which  the  national  kings  and  chiefs 
were  chosen,  or  who  had  not  secured  their  special  protection, 
had  any  rights  against  the  village  and  territorial  councils. 
But  imder  this  constitution,  kings,  chiefs,  and  people  were 
all  equally  bound  to  the  state,  and  none  of  them,  as  in  the 
later  feudal  era,  were  the  vassals  or  men  of  an  individual 
lord.  The  king  who  held  the  central  province,  and  the 
chiefs  who  ruled  the  boundary  districts,  only  held  their 
lands  for  revenue  purposes,  to  enable  them  to  provide  for 
the  defence  of  the  community,  and  though  the  chiefs  as 
officers  of  the  army,  and  therefore  more  immediately  under 
the  orders  of  the  king,  bore  some  likeness  to  the  feudal 
retainers  of  later  times,  yet  the  absence  outside  military 
exigencies  of  any  conception  of  individual  rule,  made  the 
resemblance  very  remote.  It  was  under  the  rule  of  the 
Northern  tribes,  who  were  more  warlike  than  those  of  the 
South,  that  a  definite  military  force  sprang  up,  for,  as  can 
still  be  seen  in  the  old  Tributary  States  in  India,  care  was 
taken  that  the  chiefs  and  soldiers  to  whom  the  frontier  pro- 
vinces were  confided,  should  always  be  men  who  could  be 
relied  on  to  defend  them  from  outside  attacks.     Hence  in  the 


PREFACE  Ivii 

Tributary  States  in  Chota  Nagpore,  the  frontier  provinces 
were  generally  assigned  to  the  Kaur  caste,  that  is,  to  men 
who  trace  their  descent  to  the  warlike  Eurs.  That  on  the 
fEulure  of  these  guardian  races  to  provide  adequate  security 
new  tribes  were  brought  in  from  the  outside,  is  shown  clearly 
by  one  instance  in  the  Bonai  State,  where,  within  traditional 
memory,  the  old  Bhuya  guards,  who  had  ceased  to  command 
confidence,  were  replaced  by  a  clan  imported  from  Palamow, 
who  received  a  grant  of  land  as  Ghatwals  or  frontier  guards. 
But  though  these  frontier  guards  were  a  necessary  protec- 
tion against  marauders,  it  must  be  remembered  that  all  the 
natural  instincts  of  tillers  of  the  soil  are  opposed  to  war. 
Farmers  cannot  leave  their  fields  and  waste  their  time  in 
distant  campaigns,  for  if  they  did  so  they  would  soon  find 
that,  even  if  successful,  they  must  always  remain  under  arms ; 
for  if,  after  invading  their  neighbours'*  lands,  they  returned  to 
peaceful  pursuits,  they  would  be  constantly  liable  to  retalia- 
tory attacks.  It  is  quite  impossible  that  agriculture  could 
ever  have  passed  through  the  ages  of  experiment  and  organ- 
ised effort  which  must  have  elapsed  before  it  became  a  settled 
industry,  which  not  only  provided  for  the  sustenance  of  the 
community,  but  also  laid  the  foundations  of  national  wealth, 
unless  the  agricultural  races  had  lived  during  the  days  of 
their  national  childhood  in  lands  where  their  foes  were  not 
military  robbers,  but  the  yet  unsubdued  forces  of  nature.  It 
was  in  trade  and  hunting  that  the  adventurous  spirits  of 
those  days,  who  had  not  patience  to  wait  for  the  slow  returns 
of  agricultural  effort  and  experiment,  found  an  outlet  for 
their  energies,  and  it  was  under  the  influence  of  the  trading 
races  that  the  personal  rights  of  individuals  outside  those 
accruing  to  the  actual  tillers  of  the  soil  first  began  to  be 
recognised.     The  recognition  of  these  rights  first  began  in 


Iviii    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  maintenance  and  meals  given  at  the  public  messes  to  the 
village  servants.  But  as  villages  grew  into  cities,  and  trade 
extended  beyond  the  boundaries  of  the  territory  of  the  con- 
federated villages  and  their  immediate  neighboui*s,  the 
numbei*s  of  crafts  and  craftsmen  continually  increased.  It 
was  then  that,  to  protect  their  rights,  they  formed  them- 
selves into  guilds,  which  became  the  Indian  and  Egyptian 
castes,  based  on  community  of  function,  and  it  was  to  dis- 
tinguish themselves  as  a  separate  community  that  the 
members  of  each  guild  ate  together  at  a  table  allotted  to  the 
guild  at  the  town  meals,  and  hence  they  became  a  separate 
and  distinct  body,  who,  like  their  descendants,  the  Indian 
trade  castes,  ate  together.  We  see  a  survival  of  this  old 
custom  in  the  common  dining-halls  of  the  London  guilds. 
As  these  guilds  arose  in  countries  in  which  the  original  vil- 
lage communities  had  grown  into  a  State,  governed  on  a  plan 
similar  to  that  of  the  confederated  villages  which  composed 
it,  these  trade  guilds  naturally  adopted  the  village  constitu- 
tion. Each  of  them  had,  like  the  village,  its  elected  head, 
its  officers,  its  fixed  places  and  times  of  meeting,  its  laws 
binding  on  all  its  members,  and  obliging  them  to  decide  all 
internal  disputes  by  caste  councils  called  in  India  Panchayats 
or  councils  of  five  {pafich)  appointed  within  the  guild,  leav- 
ing those  with  other  guilds  or  persons  to  be  decided  by  the 
Pafichayats  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  ii.,^  were  appointed  by 
every  city  or  state  to  decide  such  cases.  These  Indian  trad- 
ing castes  date,  as  I  show  in  Essay  ii.,  from  the  days  of 
Kushika  rule,  and  the  great  antiquity  of  the  organisation  is 
shown  by  its  universality.  For  it  was  by  these  guilds  that 
trade  was  carried  on  in  Egypt,  Greece,  and  Rome,  also  among 
the  Carthaginians,  and  as  it  still  is  by  the  Chinese,  while  the 

*  Essay  ii.  p.  loo. 


PREFACE  lix 

great  Semite    confederacy  was  an   alliance,   ruled  by  the 
priests,  between  the  trade  guilds  of  the  Shus  and  the  warrior 
and  building  tribes,   the   Northern  Gautuma  or   fire-wor- 
shippers, who  called  themselves  the  sons  of  Caleb,  the  dog, 
while  the  prominent  place  allotted  to  the  Vaishya  in  the  Soma 
sacrifice  shows  that  it  was  they  who  founded  it  when  they 
were  the  practical  rulers  of  India.     Further  approximate 
evidence  of  the  date  of  these  institutions  is  given  in  the 
omission  of  a  guild  of  iron- workers  among  the  eight  guilds 
founded,  according  to  Roman  tradition,  in  the  days  of  Numa 
Pompilius.     Among  these  there  is  a  guild  of  goldsmiths  and 
one  of  coppersmiths ;  the  presence  of  this  guild,  combined 
with    the   use  by   the    Roman    priests   of   sacred   ploughs 
made  of  copper,  and  copper  knives,^  and  the   use  of  the 
copper  razor  in  the  Indian  Soma  sacrifice,  seems  to  show  that 
the  system  was  in  full  vigour  in  the  Copper  Age  preceding 
that  of  Bronze.     As  foreign  trade  increased,  guilds  of  mer- 
chants were  added  to  those  of  handicraftsmen.     It  was  they 
who  directed  and  financed  all  distant  maritime  and  land 
trade,  and  who  maintained  members  of  their  brotherhood  as 
representative  agents  in  all  countries  with  which  they  inter- 
changed produce,  and  ^it  was  through  these  agencies  that 
means  of  communicating  by  writing  in   syllabic  characters 
first,  and  afterwards  in  alphabetical,  were  invented.     By  the 
control  of  the  sources  of  national  wealth  they  became  a  great 
power  in  the  State.     Their  national  influence  is  shown  by  the 
institution  of  the  great  annual  Soma  sacrifice  to  the  gods  of 
time, which  was,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,founded  by  the  Vaishya 
or  traders.     It  was  they  who,  as  the  Shus  or  Jains,  allied 
themselves  with  the  warrior  clans  of  the  Malli  or  mountain- 

*  Mommsen's  History  of  Rome ^  by  Dickson.    Popular  Edition,  vol.  i.  chap. 
xiii.  pp.  20I,  202. 


Ix         RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

eers,  called  first  the  Sombunsi,  or  sons  of  the  moon,  and  after- 
wards, when  the  Northern  sons  of  Pandu,  the  sun,  were  added 
to  their  ranks,  the  Surajbunsi,  or  sons  of  the  sun,  to  form  the 
great  ruling  race  of  the  Ikshvaku,  or  sons  of  the  sugar-cane 
{iksha).  We  'find  this  alliance  recorded  in  the  genealogies 
of  the  Mahabharata,  telling  of  the  marriage  of  Su-hotra, 
the  grandson  of  Bharata,  the  eponymous  father  of  the  Bhars, 
and  of  the  people  who  gave  to  India  the  name  of  Bharata- 
varsha,  or  the  country  (varsha)  of  the  Bharatas,  whose 
name  means  the  priest  (hotar)  who  pours  the  libations 
(hotra)  to  Su,  the  god  of  life,  the  father-god  of  the  Shus, 
as  he  married  Su-varna,  the  princess  of  the  race  of  Su,  the 
daughter  of  Ikshvaku.^  Their  rule  was  generally  accepted 
by  the  people  as  a  great  improvement  on  the  temporary 
anarchy  produced  by  the  first  irruptions  of  the  Northern 
warrior  races,  and  thus  the  Kushite-Semite  conquest  was 
accomplished  not  only  in  India,  but  throughout  the  whole 
of  South-western  Asia,  with  only  the  disturbance  of  the 
national  constitution  which  was  necessary,  as  I  showed  above, 
to  provide  the  supplies  required  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
police  and  military  forces  intrusted  with  the  protection  of 
property  from  internal  and  external  foes.  These  people  were 
no  less  anxious  to  preserve  peace  than  the  agricultural  races, 
and  their  conquests  were,  even  when  they  were  accompanied 
by  temporary  destruction  of  property,  most  beneficial  to  the 
people  of  the  countries  they  ruled,  and  it  was  through  their 
agency  that  the  rule  of  law  was  extended  throughout  the 
civilised  world.  It  was  they  also  who  were  the  authors 
of  the  legal  systems  which  expanded  into  the  Jewish  and 
Roman  codes,  for  these  could  never  have  grown  up  unless  the 
seeds  from  which  they  sprang  had  been  sown  by  the  Indian 

^  Mahabharata  Adi  {SamdkazHz)  Parva,  xciv.  xcv. 


PREFACE  Ixi 

Dravidian  races,  the  first  founders  of  international  trade. 
Neither  the  Roman  law  nor  the  Roman  Empire  could  ever 
have  existed  if  the  policy  of  the  State  had  not  firom  its 
infiincy  been  directed  by  a  people  who  believed  that  law,  and 
not  military  force,  was  the  most  efficient  ruler  of  the  nation. 
The  agricultural  Sabines  and  the  trading  Etruscans  were  the 
backbone  of  the  Roman  government,  and  it  was  their  con- 
servative influence  which  tempered  the  disintegrating  ten- 
dencies of  the  Aryan  Ramnes  or  sun-worshippers. 

These  Aryans  were  the  warrior  races  who,  on  their  conquest 
of  the  Semitic  empire,  introduced  a  totally  new  element  into 
international  politics.     For  it  was  they  who  made  war  the 
customary  method  of  settling  disputes  between  States,  and 
who  preferred  wealth  acquired  by  violence  to  that  accumu- 
lated by  trade.    When  wars  became  constant,  and  individuals 
became   consequently   prominent,   the  Northern  system  of 
personal  and  family  property  in  land  began  to  supersede  and 
to  be  mixed  up  with  the  commercial  tenures  of  the  village 
races,  producing  changes  such  as  those  which,  as  I  show  in 
Essay  ii.,  arose  when  the  Aryans  became  the  ruling  race. 
This  change,  if  it  had  not  been  accompanied  with  an  almost 
normal  state  of  inter-tribal  war,  would  have  ultimately,  by 
the  stimulus  given  to  individual  energy,  added  to  the  national 
prosperity,  as  it  has  since  done  in  more  peaceful  ages.     But 
when,  as  in  the  Euphratean  countries  and  South-western 
Asia,  Greece,  and  Rome,  it  led  to  constant  feuds  and  military 
expeditions,  accompanied  by  the  devastation  of  fields,  the 
destruction  of  fruit-trees  and  buildings,  agriculture  naturally 
declined,  and  cultivated  areas  reverted  to  waste,  and  recupe- 
ration was  only  made  possible  by  the  establishment  of  power- 
ful military  despotisms,  such  as  those  which  ruled  in  the 
Euphratean  countries  and  Egypt,  and  the  government  of  the 


1x11      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Tyrants  in  Greece.  But  the  ruling  classes  in  this  system  of 
government  looked  on  all  manual  work  as  degrading,  and 
the  recovery  of  the  lands  harried  by  the  Aryan  invaders,  and 
reduced  to  a  condition  which  must  have  been  similar  to  that 
of  the  Roman  Empire  after  its  conquest  by  the  Barbarians, 
was  only  made  possible  by  the  institution  of  slavery.  The 
chief  agents  of  the  slave  traffic  of  the  East,  which  arose  out 
of  the  employment  of  slaves  to  till  the  soil,  were  the  Phoeni- 
cians of  Tyre  and  the  Palestinian  coasts,  and  it  was  they 
who,  as  we  learn  from  the  Odyssey^  ravaged  the  islands  and 
mainland  of  Greece  in  search  of  slaves.^ 

These  new  Phoenician  Semites  were  the  royal  race  formed 
under  the  rule  of  the  sun-worshipping  tribe  of  Benjamin, 
whose  king  was  Shawal  or  Saul,  the  Babylonian  sun-god,  and 
it  was  from  the  custom  of  slavery  which  they  introduced  that 
the  slave  system  of  Greece  and  Rome  originated.  Before 
this,  slavery  had  only  been  the  mild  kind  of  ser\  itude  arising 
out  of  the  Indian  custom  by  which  a  man  assigned  tlie  labour 
of  himself  and  his  family  to  work  out  the  payment  of  a  debt, 
or  undertook  to  serve  an  employer  in  order  to  obtain  his 
daughter  in  marriage. 

It  was  the  changes  introduced  by  the  Northern  races,  be- 
ginning with  the  substitution  of  marriage  for  the  matriarchal 
customs  descrilx^d  in  Essay  iii.,  and  ending  in  the  institution 
of  national  wars  and  slavery,  which  caused  the  true  meaning 
of  mythic  and  ritualistic  history  to  be  forgotten,  and  their 
use  as  historical  records  to  be  discontinued.  It  is  this  aban- 
donment of  ancient  methods  which  has  led  to  all  the  errors 

caused   by  trying  to  explain  civilisation  as  a  product  of 

• 

^  Odyssey  xv.  403-484.  This  passage  tells  how  Eumscus,  the  swineherd 
of  Odusseus,  who  had  been  bom  as  the  son  of  the  king  of  Surie,  was  carried 
off  with  his  nurse,  who  was  a  Phoenician  woman,  into  slavery  by  Phoenician 
pirates. 


PREFACE  Ixiii 

Northern  initiative,  and  by  thus  neglecting  the  contribu- 
tions made  by  Southern  races.  When  these  have  once  been 
allowed  their  proper  place,  we  can  realise  the  condition  of 
the  world  before  the  customs  of  the  earlier  age  were  tempor- 
arily subverted  by  the  Aryan  invaders,  and  can  see  how  the 
old  spirit  of  the  men  who  had  founded  the  age  of  law 
emerged  again  to  direct  the  councils  of  the  State  when  the 
first  fury  of  the  assault  and  conquest  had  been  assuaged  by 
the  growth  of  later  generations  bom  from  the  union  of  the 
conquerors  and  the  conquered. 

But  the  history  of  the  amalgamation  of  these  alien  races, 
as  well  as  that  of  others  who  preceded  them,  has  yet  to  be 
written,  and  this. work  can  only  be  done  by  the  help  of  the 
too  much  neglected  evidence  to  which  I  have  called  atten- 
tion in  this  volume.  I  only  hope  that  these  Essays  will  help 
to  clear  the  way  for  future  inquirers,  who  will  add  to  and 
collate  the  evidence  which  still  remains  to  be  sifted,  study 
the  question  by  the  light  of  the  immense  mass  of  data  which 
I  have  left  unexamined,  correct  the  mistakes  that  I  and 
others  have  made,  and  produce  such  a  history  of  the  Past  as 
will  make  the  teachings  of  the  half-dumb  founders  of  civili- 
sation, born  before  the  days  of  alphabetical  history,  and 
therefore  only  able  to  record  their  messages  to  posterity  in 
allegories,  parables,  organised  customs,  buildings,  imple- 
ments, productions,  and  their  manipulation  of  language, 
still  more  useful  guides  than  they  have  hitherto  been  to 
the  present  actors  in  the  drama  which  is  developing,  without 
pause  or  intermission,  the  history  of  the  world. 

In  conclusion,  I  have  to  record  my  heartiest  thanks  to 
those  who  have  helped  me  in  my  work  by  their  personal 
assistance  and  advice,  and  also  to  the  authors  whose  writings 
have  supplied  the  facts  from  which  a  large  part  of  my  deduc- 


J 


Ixiv     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tions  have  been  drawn.  First  and  foremost  my  especial 
acknowledgments  are  due  to  Professor  Rhys  Davids,  who 
first  induced  me  to  put  together  the  scattered  notes  and 
thoughts  I  had  collected  in  India,  and  to  continue  my  studies 
in  ancient  history  by  writing  a  series  of  articles  on  the  Early 
History  of  Northern  India  in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  A  static 
Society,  It  was  he  who,  after  these  articles  were  written, 
urged  me  to  continue  the  work  I  had  begun,  and  to  write 
this  book  embodying  the  final  outcome  of  my  researches ;  it 
is  he  whom  my  readers  must  thank  for  whatever  pleasure  or 
profit  they  may  gain  by  perusing  it,  and  it  is  to  him  I  owe 
the  many  pleasant  hours  of  discovery  I  have  enjoyed  while 
trying  to  solve  the  problems  it  opened  up.  I  have  also  to 
record  my  warmest  thanks  to  Mr.  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A., 
who  has  given  me  special  help  in  writing  that  part  of  the 
book  founded  on  Akkadian  astronomy ;  to  Baboo  Pratapa 
Chandra  Ray,  CLE.,  whose  translation  of  the  Mahabharata, 
which  I  have  used  in  all  my  quotations  from  the  poem,  will 
prove  an  invaluable  boon  to  all  students  of  early  Indian  and 
human  history ;  to  the  authors  of  the  series  of  the  Sacred 
Books  of  the  East,  and  Professor  F.  Max  Muller,  the  editor 
and  originator,  who  have  enabled  those  who  do  not  possess 
the  linguistic  knowledge  of  a  Mezzofanti,  to  read  in  modem 
speech  the  inmost  thoughts  of  those  pioneer  races  of  the 
East,  who  stereotyped  their  history  and  their  religions  and 
national  aspirations  in  their  ritual  and  its  manuals. 

For  the  evidence  as  to  Akkadian  ritual  I  am  chiefly  in- 
debted to  Professor  Sayce^s  Hibbert  Lectures  on  the  Religion 
of  tfie  Ancient  BaiylonianSf  And  I  have  been  greatly  helped  in 
my  account  of  the  great  historical  Soma  Sacrifice  of  India 
by  Professor  Hillebrandf's  Vedische  Mythohgie, 

For   most   of  the   full    and    exact   descriptions   of  the 


PREFACE  Ixv 

customs  of  the  primitive  races  of  India  which  I  have  been 
able  to  adduce,  my  best  thanks  are  due  to  Mr.  H.tH.  Risley 
of  the  Bengal  Civil  Service,  the  author  of  the  Tribes  cmd 
Castes  of  Bengal^  as  well  as  to  the  Government  of  Bengal, 
who  were  good  enough  to  send  me  a  copy  of  the  book.  I 
finally  hope  that  the  living  authors  whom  I  have  quoted, 
but  have  not  mentioned  in  this  list,  will  believe  that  the 
omission  of  their  names  is'not  due  to  want  of  gratitude  on 
my  part,  and  that  they  will  accept  the  references  to  their 
works  in  the  notes  as  expressions  of  my  thanks. 


M 


ESSAYS 


ESSAY  I 

It  was  in  the  year  1868,  when  I  first  went  to  Chota  Nagpore 
as  Deputy  Commissioner,  that  the  interest  aroused  by  the 
researches  of  Col.  Dalton,  the  Commissioner  of  the  Province, 
who  was  the  first  pioneer  of  aboriginal  ethnology  in  Bengal, 
and  the  exigencies  of  administrative  work  prompted  me  to 
begin  the  inquiries  which  have  led  me  to  the  conclusions  set 
forth  in  these  Essays.  I  then  learned  that  the  village  com- 
munities of  the  Ooraons  of  Lohardugga  were  organised  accord- 
ing to  rules  which  I  had  always  before  been  taught  to  believe 
originated  in  Europe ;  I  also  found  that  both  these  people 
and  their  congeners  and  fellow-countrymen,  the  Mundas, 
whose  village  organisation  was  much  more  primitive  than 
that  of  the  Ooraons,  belonged  to  races  who  had  no  affinities 
with  the  Northern  people  who  called  themselves  Aryans,  and 
who  were  supposed  to  have  introduced  village  communities, 
together  with  the  Aryan  Sanskrit  tongue,  into  India.  It 
was  impossible  to  believe  that  the  village  customs  of  tlie 
Mundas  and  the  Ooraons  were  derived  from  races  whose 
mother  speech  was  of  Aryan  origin,  for  they  both  spoke 
languages  of  the  agglutinative  type,  that  of  the  Mundas 
being  allied  to  those  spoken  by  the  aborigines  of  Burma  and 
South-Extern  Asia,  and  that  of  the  Ooraons  to  the  Tamil 
group  of  Dravidian  languages.  Furthermore,  these  people 
hated  the  Aryanised  Hindus  most  intensely,  as  they  looked 
on  them  as  interlopers  who  tried  to  subvert  their  customs 
and  rob  them  of  their  lands.  On  examining  the  history  of 
the  country  I  found  that  this  antagonism  between  the 
1 


2      THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Mundas  and  Ooraons  on  one  side,  and  the  hated  Hindus, 
wliom  they  called  Sad  lis,  on  the  other,  had  existed  from  the 
very  remote  ages  when  the  Rajas  of  Chota  Nagpore  first 
began  to  ally  themselves  by  marriage  with  the  Arianised 
Rajputs  of  the  Gangetic  valley,  and  had  introduced  Hindu 
adherents,  advisers,  and  clients  into  the  country.  The 
time  when  I  first  went  to  Chota  Nagpore  was  one  of  the 
periodical  periods  of  unrest,  caused  by  efforts  made  by  the 
aboriginal  inhabitants  to  shake  off  the  yoke  of  the  immigrant 
Hindus,  and  to  recover  possession  of  the  village  lands 
from  which  they  had  been  ousted  by  the  new-comers.  They 
had  twice  before  since  the  beginning  of  English  rule  in 
Bengal,  once  about  1780,  and  again  in  1833,  risen  in  actual 
rebellion  against  their  Raja  and  his  Hindu  ministers.  And 
it  was  after  the  last  rebellion  that  English  officers  were 
appointed  to  supersede  the  rule  of  the  Raja  and  his  un- 
popular advisers.  But  though  under  the  new  regime  the 
encroachments  on  the  rights  of  the  original  landholders  were 
checked,  yet  the  yearning  for  Home  Rule,  or  the  government 
of  the  country,  under  English  supervision,  in  accordance  with 
national  customs,  still  survived,  and  the  Ooraons  and 
Mundas  desired  above  all  things  to  have  control  of  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  land,  and  to  obtain  the  restitution  of  the 
large  tracts  which  had  been  granted  to  Hindu  Sadhs,  or 
acquired  by  them  under  the  forms  of  alien  law.  It  was  in 
the  hope  of  enlisting  the  English  rulers  on  their  side  that 
they,  as  they  have  often  told  me,  began  to  listen  eagerly  to 
the  teachings  of  the  German  Lutherans,  who  were  the  first 
missionaries  who  entered  the  country,  about  1846.  But  it 
was  a  long  time  before  their  distrust  of  the  strangers  began 
to  give  way  to  their  hopes  of  deriving  advantage  from  an 
alliance  with  them,  and  the  beginnings  of  the  movement 
towards  inquiry  as  to  the  lessons  to  be  learnt  from  them 
were  checked  by  the  Mutiny  in  1857,  when  the  revolted 
Ramghur  regiment  gained  temporary  possession  of  Chota 
Nagpore.      It   was  only  a  short   time  before   I   first   took 


ESSAY  I  3 

cimrge  of  the  Lohardugga  district  that  conversions  began 
to    be   made,   not  by  twos  and  threes,    but   by  thousands 
in  each  year.     The  Ooraon  and  Munda  inhabitants  of  whole 
villages  all  became  Christians  together,  and  the  change  of 
faith  was  in  many  instances  followed  by  the  seizure  of  tlie 
lands  held  by  the  Hindus.     It  was  in  inquiring  into  these 
cases  of  dispossession  that  I  iirst  learned  to  understand  how 
impossible  it  was  that  Ooraon  and  Munda  village  organisa- 
tion and  customs  could  ever  have  originated  among  an  Aryan 
people,  and  my  subsequent  experience,  from  tlie  end  of  1864 
till  1869,  as  settlement  officer  of  the  adjoining  district  of 
Chuttisgurh,  confirmed  these  conclusions.     For  in  this  old 
Gond  Kingdom  of  the  Haihaiyas  I  found  village  laws  differing 
from  those  of  the  Mundas  and  Ooraons,  but  yet  sufficiently 
jilike  to  mark  these  adjoining  groups  as  the  offspring  of  a 
national  development  leading  from  the  simple  village  com- 
munities of  the  Mundas,  through  the  more  complex  customs 
of  the  Gonds  to  the  elabonitely  organised  Ooraon  village,  and 
the  evidence  showed  that  it  was  impossible  to  doubt  that  the 
whole  system  was  one  of  indigenous,  and  not  of  imported, 
growth.     But  these  village  communities,  holding  their  lauds 
in  common  but  not  in  individual  property,  were  in  organisa- 
tion and  customs  precisely  similar  to  those  which  formed  the 
dominant  land  tenure  throughout  South-Western  Asia  and 
in  all  European    countries,  except  the  small  area  in    the 
North-West  of  Europe,  where  the  open  fields  of  the  village 
connnunes  are  superseded  by  the  hedges  and  partition  marks 
which  distinguish  the  English  farm  and  the  Bauergut  of 
North-Western    Germany    from    the     Southern     Gau     or 
Gemeinde  and  the  Russian  Mir. 

From  this  identity  of  the  indigenous  Indian  village  with  the 
village  communities  of  Europe,  the  question  arose  how  and 
when  did  village  connnunities,  organised  according  to  the 
customs  originating  in  India,  spread  from  thence  through 
all  the  countries  lying  between  it  and  North- West  Germany.^ 
And  to  this,  as  I  soon  found,  another  question  was  necessarily 


i 


4      THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

added.  How  is  it  that  the  local  dialects  generally  spoken 
throughout  all  Indian  districts  north  of  the  Godavery  are 
offshoots  of  the  Aryan  Sanskrit  tongue,  while  the  whole 
organisation  of  Hindu  society  is  founded  not  on  the  Aryan 
family,  but  on  the  much  wider  and  more  diffuse  institution 
of  castes,  many  of  which,  such  as  the  Telis,  meaning  the  oil- 
sellers  ;  the  Tantis,  the  weavers ;  the  Chasa,  the  cultivators ; 
mark  by  their  names  that  they  are  not  formed  by  the  union 
of  the  reputed  descendants  of  some  common  ancestor,  but 
by  the  amalgamation  of  peoj)le  of  possibly  heterogeneous 
descent  who  followed  the  same  trade?  Furthermore,  how 
is  it  that  the  Sanskrit  language,  belonging  to  the  inflectional 
group  of  Indo-European  tongues  which  mark  the  races 
among  whom  property  in  land  was  originally  vested  in 
families  and  individuals,  and  not  in  communities  as  among 
the  earliest  ruling  races  of  India,  became  the  dominant  lan- 
guage of  the  tribes  highest  in  the  social  scale  in  a  country 
where  the  system  of  communal  property  originated  ? 

Thus  the  problems  that  presented  themselves  for  solution 
were,  first,  how  to  explain  the  diffusion  of  Indian  land- 
tenures  throughout  South-Western  Asia  and  Europe ;  and 
secondly,  to  show  how  languages  of  the  type  dominant  in 
Europe,  which  differed  radically  from  the  original  agglutina- 
tive tongues  of  South- Western  Asia,  were  diffused  throughout 
Persia  and  Northern  India,  countries  separated  from  Europe 
by  the  wide  territories  ruled  by  the  Semitic  races  ?  In  con- 
sidering the  problem  in  this  light,  it  was  clear  that  as  the 
same  system  of  communal  land-tenure  which  originated  in 
India,  was  found  to  be  equally  dominant  in  countries  under 
Indian,  Semitic,  and  Indo-European  rule,  it  was  therefore  pro- 
bable that  the  immigrant  races  who  brought  the  Indian  village 
system  through  Semitic  lands  into  Europe  had  established 
themselves  in  these  countries  before  the  group  of  Semitic 
languages  had  been  formed,  and  before  the  people  speaking 
them  had  become  a  dominant  confederacy,  forming  a  wedge 
between  the  European  and  Indian  races.     This  conclusion 


ESSAY  I  5 

was  confirmed  by  considering  the  great  antiquity  that  must 
be  assigned  to  the  early  European  village  communities  who 
founded  the  pile  villages  of  the  Neolithic  and  Bronze  Ages, 
the  remains  of  which  have  been  found  in  all  European 
countries,  while  the  stone  monuments  of  the  races  who  built 
them  extend  from  the  Eastern  shores  of  Asia  to  the  coasts 
of  the  Atlantic  on  the  West. 

Again,  these  early  villagers,  who  originally,  as  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  ii.,  probably  belonged  to  the  Indian  Dravidian  races, 
must  have  spoken  languages  belonging  to  the  same  family 
as  those  of  Southern  India,  and  we  can  thus  explain  how  it 
was  that  these  people  gave  to  their  mother  mountain  Ida  in 
Phrygia  the  name  of  the  Tamil  mother  goddess,  Eda,  the 
sheep,  the  mother  of  the  shepherd  races,  and  account  for  the 
great  similarity  between  Tamil,  Hebrew,  and  Latin  roots  shown 
by  Dr.  Caldwell  in  his  comparative  grammar  of  the  Dravidian 
languages.  We  can  also  through  the  identity  of  the  races 
who  founded  the  village  communities  of  India,  South- 
western Asia,  and  Greece,  explain  how  the  whole  ritual  of 
the  worship  of  the  mother  earth  in  Assyria,  Palestine,  Asia 
Minor,  and  Greece,  the  sanctity  of  the  village  groves  and 
the  reverence  for  the  mother  tree  in  all  Asiatic  and  European 
countries,  grew  out  of  the  seasonal  dances  to  the  gods  held 
in  the  Sarna  or  holy  grove  of  the  Indian  village,  and  how 
the  political  organisation  of  the  rule  of  the  Amazons  in 
Asia  Minor  and  Greece  was  founded  on  the  matriarchal 
customs  of  Southern  India. 

In  following  up  the  inquiry  as  to  the  evidence  available 
for  elucidating  the  history  of  these  first  pioneers  of  civilisa- 
tion and  of  their  successors  who  ruled  before  the  days  when 
the  discovery  and  dissemination  of  alphabetical  writing  made 
annalistic  history  recording  the  deeds  of  individuals  possible, 
I  found  that  the  Indian  Brahmanas  described  the  stages  of 
the  evolution  of  ritual  from  the  days  when  the  first  altar  was 
made  and  consecrated  to  the  mother  earth.  Though  the 
consecration  of  the  first  altar  constructed  according  to  these 


d 


6      THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEViES 

rules  was  subsequent  to  the  age  of  niatriarelial  rule,  and  the 
consecration  of  the  village  grove,  yet  its  great  anticiuity  is 
proved  by  the  discovery  by  Dr.  Schliemann  in  the  ruins  of 
the  Trojan  city  of  the  early  Bronze  Age  of  a  leaden  image  of 
the  mother  goddess,  described  by  me  in  Essay  iii.,  bearing 
on  it  the  symbols  ordered  in  the  Indian  ritual  to  be  marked 
on  the  primaeval  altar.  Following  out  the  clews  given  in 
the  Brahmanas  and  Rigveda  I  found  that  the  history  of  the 
early  ritual  of  the  Hindus  can  only  be  explained  when  it  is 
compared  with  that  of  the  Akkadians,  and  that  the  identity 
of  the  names  ^  and  attributes  of  tlie  early  gods  in  Hindu 
and  Akkadian  mythology,  show  that  the  religious  con- 
ceptions of  the  two  people  were  evolved  on  nearly  identical 
lines.  They  are  also  both  connected  by  the  common  link  of 
Zend  ritual,  and  the  reverence  paid  by  all  three  nations  to 
the  creator  of  the  germ  of  life,  the  Akkadian  and  Egyp- 
tian Shu,  the  fire-god  who  made  the  Indian  Soma  and  the 
Zend  Haoma,  the  heavenly  rain  and  seed  which  creates 
life  on  earth.  It  is  the  seed  of  life  which  was,  according  to 
the  belief  of  all  three  nations,  enshrined  in  the  mother- 
mountain  of  the  East,  whence  Indra  the  rain-god  gets  the 
rain,  the  parent  of  Is-tar  the  daughter  (tar)  of  the  mountain 
(is)  and  of  the  Indian  rain-god  Shuk-ra  or  Suk-ni,  who  is 
called  in  Akkadian  Suk-us  or  Shuk-us,  the  wet  (suk)  god 
(flw),  the  Akkadian  name  of  Istar. 

I  also  found  that  the  Egyptian  religious  and  national  his- 
tory in  the  two  stages  of  its  growth,  first  from  Southern  and 
afterwards  from  Northern  influences,  can  be  traced  to  Indian 
and  Akkadian  sources,  and  that  it  was  impossible  that  the 
maritime  commerce,  whence  the  wealth  was  earned  which 
made  the  Euphratean  countries  and  Egypt  rulers  of  the 
ancient  world,  could  have  been  foinided,  except  by  the  Indian 

^  Instances  of  this  identity  will  be  found  in  many  passages  in  these  Essays, 
and  of  these  I  may  mention  here  that  of  the  Hindu  Ap-sara,  the  cloud  goddesses, 
and  the  Akkadian  Ab-zu,  the  abyss,  also  that  of  the  Akkadian  god  of  the  West- 
wind,  Martu,  and  the  Indian  goddesses  of  the  south-west  wind,  the  Maruts. 


ESSAY  I  7 

seamen,  who  alone,  r.f  the  races  living  in  South -Western 
Asia,  possessed  fore^its  close  to  the  sea-shore,  yielding  ship- 
building timber. 

But  though  much  valuable  historical  evidence  is,  as  I  have 
shown  in  these  Essays,  deducible  from  ritualistic  history, 
antiquarian  remains,  botany  and  zoology ;  yet  the  con- 
tinuous account  of  the  evolutionary  progress  of  civilisation 
which  I  have  tried  to  trace  in  these  pages  could  never  have 
been  written  without  the  help  of  the  ancient  mythic  tales 
handed  down  orally  from  generation  to  generation  by  the 
the  Asipu,  the  official  diviners,  interpreters,  and  keepers  of 
nati(mal  records.  It  was  they  who  were  first  the  teachers 
of  the  children  of  the  primoeval  villages,  who  began,  as  the 
instructors  of  agricultural  communities,  to  record,  in  the 
form  of  stories,  the  succession  of  natural  phenomena  for  the 
instruction  of  their  pupils,  and  who  afterwards  altered  these 
stories  in  the  manner  shown  in  Essay  ii.  in  the  comparison  of 
the  tale  of  Nala  and  Damayanti,  and  of  that  of  the  plot  of 
the  Mahabharata,  so  as  to  make  them  national  histories.  It 
was  these  ancient  historians  who  became  the  depositaries 
and  guardians  of  the  wisdom  of  the  national  ancestors  and 
their  predecessors,  and  the  preservers  of  the  historical  ex- 
perience of  past  ages  which  was  proved  by  constant  practical 
testing  of  its  value  to  be  the  best  guide  for  those  who 
founded,  enlarged,  and  maintained  the  imperial  dominions 
of  the  primaeval  Kushite  race  which  germinated  from  the 
alliances  of  adjoining  village  communities  for  purposes  of 
mutual  defence  and  the  promotion  of  internal  trade.  It  is, 
as  I  have  shown  in  the  text,  the  names  of  the  supposed 
heroes  of  mythical  narratives  which  mark  the  succession  of 
epochs  in  the  world''s  history ;  and  it  is  from  this  evidence, 
combined  with  that  gathered  from  the  other  sources  to 
which  I  have  already  referred,  from  linguistic  affinities  and 
the  recorded  customs  of  the  tribes  forming  the  nations 
dwelling  within  the  area  over  which  my  inquiries  have 
extended,  that  I  have  been  able  to  deduce   the  order  in 


8      THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

which  the  successive  ages   marking  t*ie  growth  of  human 
society  followed  each  other. 

These  began  with  the  epoch  of  the  primeval  village,  the 
worship  of  the  mother  earth,  and  the  prevalence  in  Southern 
lands  of  matriarchal  rule.  This  was  followed  by  the  union 
of  the  patriarchal  worshippers  of  the  Northern  father-god 
with  the  matriarchal  races  of  the  South ;  and  they,  again, 
were  succeeded  by  the  miners,  metal-workers,  and  artisans  of 
the  early  Bronze  Age,  who  looked  on  fire  and  the  life-giving 
heat  as  the  author  of  life.  These  were  the  people  who  in 
Asia  Minor  became  the  worshippers  of  the  mother  goddess 
Magha,  the  socket-block  from  which  fire  was  generated  by 
the  fire-drill,  and  it  was  they  who  became  the  Magi  of 
Persia  and  the  Maghadas  of  Indian  history.  They  were 
succeeded  by  the  Shepherd  races  of  the  Caucasus,  who,  while 
they  acknowledged  the  divinity  of  fire  as  represented  in  the 
lightning  flash  which  preceded  and  made  fertile  the  life- 
giving  rain,  also  looked  on  the  rain-god  as  the  parent, 
mother,  and  author  of  all  life  on  earth.  It  was  they  who, 
coming  southward  from  the  Caucasus,  and  passing  through 
the  Euphrates  valley,  formed  the  great  confederacy  of  the 
sons  of  Kush,  the  tortoise,  grouped  round  the  mother-moun- 
tain of  the  East,  to  which  I  have  already  referred  as  the 
mother-mountain  of  the  Hindus,  Akkadians,  Semitic  As- 
syrians and  the  Zend  races  of  Persia.  It  is  the  history  of 
the  worship  of  the  great  Naga,  the  snake  or  plough  of 
heaven,  the  impregnator  of  the  creating  rain  which  I  have 
traced  in  Essay  in.  to  theGond  worship  of  the  Nagur  or  plough 
at  the  annual  festival  of  the  Akhtuj,  held  in  the  beginning 
of  the  Gond  year,  on  a  date  nearly  answering  to  our  3d  of  May. 
This  is,  as  I  have  shown  in  the  text,  nearly  the  same  time  as 
the  23d  of  April,  dedicated  in  our  calendar  to  St.  George, 
whose  Greek  name  marks  him  as  the  worker  (ourgos)  of  the 
earth  (^e),  that  is,  '  the  heavenly  plough."* 

But  as  I  have  since  discovered,  I   have  omitted  in  my 
Essay  several  of  the  most  important  links  which  make  it 


ESSAY  I  9 

absolutely  cei-tain  that  the  Saint  who  is  now  called  St. 
George,  was  originally  the  great  Naga,  the  god  who  sends 
the  rain  which  makes  the  earth  capable  of  producing  life, 
and  which  causes  the  seed  to  sprout  and  grow. 

In  tracing  the  descent  of  the  myth,  we  must  go  back  to  the 
Egyptian  god  Horus  and  the  Akkadian  Istar.  Horus  is  the 
son  of  Hat-hor,  whose  name  means  the  house  (hat)  of  Hor, 
that  is,  the  temple  or  mother  whence  he  was  bom.  She  is  un- 
doubtedly, as  Professor Tiele  affirms,  identical  with  the  goddess 
Istar,  the  daughter  (tar)  of  the  mountain  (i>),  and  it  is  her 
sister  and  counterpart  Isis  the  wife  of  Osiris  the  Assyrian 
god  Asar,  who  has  brought  the  root  Is  of  her  name  into 
Egyptian  mythology.  The  only  son  of  Istar  was  Dumu-zi, 
meaning  the  son  (dutnu)  of  life  (zi\  bom  without  a  father  in 
the  temple,  '  where  no  man  has  entered,"'  ^  and  it  is  he  who 
is  the  Tammuz  of  the  Semites,  who,  as  we  are  told  in  the 
earliest  form  of  the  Akkadian  Flood  legend,  launched  his 
bark  on  the  waters  of  the  Flood,  and  thus  survived  to  be  the 
father  of  life  on  earth.'  His  Egyptian  counterpart  Hor-us, 
the  son  of  Hat-hor,  the  supreme  (hor)  god  (as)  was  the  god 
of  the  races  called  the  Har-shesu,  or  followers  of  Hor-us, 
who  ruled  Egypt  before  its  chronological  history  began 
with  the  reign  of  Menes,  the  Egyptian  Mena,  about  5000 
B.C.,  and  he  and  his  four  sons  represent,  as  I  have  shown  in 
Essay  iii.  the  rain  or  meridian  pole  standing  in  the  midst  of 
the  four  stars  marking  the  four  quarters  of  the  heavens.  He 
is,  in  short,  the  Ash-era  or  rain-pole  of  the  Semites,  the  Ba''al 
or  husband  of  the  land,  and  the  Tur  or  meridian  pole  of  the 
Akkadians,  sacred  to  the  god  Nun — the  spirit-god  dwelling 
in  and  vivifying  the  mists  of  the  atmosphere,  worshipped 
both    by   the   Akkadians   and    Egyptians   as   the   supreme 

^  Tiele,  Ouiluu  of  the  History  of  Ancient  Religions^  *  Religion  among  the 
Egyptians/  p.  58. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbtrt  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  238  ;  line  six  of  the  transla- 
tion of  the  bi-Iingual  hymn. 

'  Encyclopadia  Britannicay  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  Deluge,  vol.  vii.  p.  55. 
Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  233. 


A 


10    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEVIES 

Creator.  Mons.  Clemiont-Ganncaii,  in  his  paper  on  Horus 
and  St.  George  in  the  Revue  Archiohgique^  has  shown  that 
an  Egyptian  statue  in  the  Louvre,  representing  the  combat 
of  Horus  with  Set  is,  except  that  Horus  has  the  head  of  a 
sparrow-hawk,  identical  with  Byzantine  pictures  of  the 
combat  of  St.  George  with  the  dragon,  for  in  l)oth  the  con- 
queror is  depicted  as  riding  on  a  horse  in  military  costume, 
and  thrusting  a  lance  into  the  neck  of  a  crocodile  on 
which  the  horse  is  trampling.^  In  this  Egyptian  statue 
of  the  bird-headed  hero  we  see  also  the  reminiscence  of  the 
primaeval  myth  of  the  storm-bird,  which  I  have  descril)ed  in 
Essay  iii.,  which  brings  the  rains  of  the  Indian  rainy  season 
to  the  central  mountain  of  tlie  East,  along  the  path  from 
south-west  to  north-east  marl-'d  on  the  Hindu  altar  as  the 
path  of  Indra,  the  rain-god.  And  we  see  in  Horus  the  god 
who,  like  the  Indra  of  the  Rigveda,  slays  the  dragon  of 
drought,  Shushna,  called  under  another  form  Vy-ansa,  or 
he  with  the  two  {vi)  shoulders  {ansa),  Vyansa  is  said  in  one 
hymn  to  be  the  father  of  Indra,  whose  mother  was  like  tlie 
Egyptian  cow-goddess  Isis,  the  cow-mother  Aditl,  the 
mother  of  life.-  This  demon  of  drought,  the  broad- 
shouldered  cloud  which  seems  at  first  to  keep  back  the  rain, 
the  alligator  or  crocodile,  father  of  the  Indian  Maghadas, 
and  the  Egyptian  worshippers  of  Set,  called  Maga,  Mug-ral 
and  Mug-gur  by  tlic  Hindus,  and  Maga  Sebek,  or  Maga,  the 
uniter,^  by  the  Egyptians,  is,  as  we  are  told  in  the  Rigveda 
and  Satapatha  Brahmana,  the  god,  otherwise  called  Danu, 
the  judge  of  tlie  Akkadians  born  from  the  Soma  or  life- 
giving  water,  the  divine  Su,  or  begetter,  and  Agni  the 
god  of  fire,  the  lightning  flash.*     This  same  myth  is  repeated 

^  Clermont-Ganneau,  *  Horus  et  St.  George.'  Revue  ArchSolo^i^que^  Nouv. 
Sen  t.  xxxii.  pp.  388-397. 

^  Rigveda,  iv.  18,   I,  9,  10,  Lud wig's  translation,  vol.  ii.  p.  590. 

^  From  Sbk^  to  unite. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  32,  5,  9,  (Ludwig,  vol.  ii.  p.  596).  In  this  hymn  the  death  of 
Danu,  called  in  stanza  5  Vyansa,  is  described  in  stanza  9,  where  he  is  said, 
when  slain  by  Indra 's  weapons,  to  be  left  lying  under  his  mother,  the  atmo- 


ESSAY  I  11 

in  that  of  Tishtrya  of  the  Zend  Avesta,  the  rain-star  who 
fights  under  the  guises  of  a  young  man  fifteen  years  old,  a 
golden-homed  bull,  and  a  white  horse  with  the  black  hoi-se 
Ap-aosha,  the  burner  (aosha)  of  the  waters  {ap\^  the  black 
cloud  of  the  Indian  summer  season,  whence  the  burning 
west  wind  which  keeps  back  the  rain  issues.  It  is  the  spear 
or  meridian  pole 'of  the  rain-god,  which  pierces  the  cloud 
and  makes  it  give  the  rain,  and  this  rain-cloud,  depicted  as  a 
crocodile  in  the  Egyptian  statue,  is  the  Mug-ral  or  alligator 
of  the  Gond  song  of  Lingal,  who  attempts  to  drown  the 
Gronds  in  the  flood  brought  from  the  south-west  by  the 
Bindo  storm-bird.  This  alligator  is  conquered  by  Lingal, 
the  father-god  of  the  Gond  races,  the  counterpart  of  Indra, 
Horus,  and  Dumu-zi,  who  has  been  borne  across  the  waters 
of  the  flood  by  Puse,  the  tortoise.  It  is  this  same  god 
Horus  and  Dumu-zi  the  son  of  Istar-Hathor  (the  mother 
mountain  of  the  land  of  the  tortoise  Kush),  who  is  the  rain- 
god  of  the  Akkadian  Flood  legend  called  Nin-igi-a-zag,  or 
the  first  bom  (zag)  of  the  lady  (7iin)  of  the  spirits  (jgi)  of 
water  (a),  who  sends  on  earth  the  rains  which  cause  the  flood. 
These  appear  in  the  Indian  Flood  story,  as  the  baptismal 
waters  consecrating  a  new  earth,  the  new-bom  mother  Ida, 
the  mother  mountain,  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness.  She 
arose  from  the  heavenly  seed  of  milk,  curds,  and  whey,  sown 
in  the  waters  by  Manu,  meaning  tlie  thinker,  to  be  the  cow- 
mother  of  the  cultivating  race,  the  holy  race  of  which 
Manu  was  the  father.  This  was  the  race  called  in  the 
Mahabharata,  the  Iravata,  who  settled  on  the  rivers  which 
watered  the  tortoise  earth,  the  lands  of  India,  the  great 
irrigating  race  who  are  still  in  India  called  the  Kurmi  or 
sons  of  Kur,  the  tortoise.  And  it  was  the  worship  of  the 
mother  of  the  waters,  whence  the  rivers  rise  which  was  trans- 
spheric  vault,  and  this  combat  is-  described  in  the  Satapatha  Brahmana,  i.  6. 
3,  8-14.  (S.  B.  E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  165,  166),  where  Danava,  born  Irom  Soma  and 
Agni,  b  said  to  be  slain  by  Indra  with  the  help  of  those  who  begot  him. 
^  Darnusteter  Zendavesta  Tir  Yasi,  13,  16,  18.  (S.  B.  E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  98.) 


12    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

ferred  to  the  Euphrates  valley  in  the  worship  of  the  Baby- 
lonian and  Zend  goddess  Anahita,  called  by  Herodotus 
17  Ovpavlrjy  the  heavenly  mother,  and  to  Egypt  in  the  wor- 
ship of  the  cow-mother  Isis.^ 

When  we  turn  from  the  Egyptian,  Zend,  Akkadian,  and 
Indian  rain-gods  to  St.  George,  we  find  that  the  latter  is 
worshipped  under  the  names  of  Gherghis  or  El  Khudr, 
throughout  Syria  and  Palestine,  and  that  in  Lydda  which 
is  the  centre  of  his  worship,  and  is  called  in  the  Episcopal 
lists ''Ay^o  ylopyiov  TroXi?  or  the  city  (ttoXcs)  of  the  holy 
(&yLo)  George  {ytopycov)^  his  temple  is  still  pointed  out  as 
the  home  of  Khudr,  and  his  festival  is  celebrated  yearly 
on  the  23d  April,  the  English  St.  George''s  Day.  He  is 
also  called  by  the  Mohammedans,  the  Hasreti  (prophet) 
Elias,  and  it  is  under  this  name  or  that  of  Zeus  Ombrios 
or  Huetios,  the  rainy  or  showery  Zeus,  that  he  is  wor- 
shipped on  every  high  hill  and  promontory  in  Greece, 
while  in  time  of  drought  people  flock  to  the  churches  and 
monasteries  dedicated  to  him,  to  beg  for  rain.^  It  is  thus  in 
this  name  that  we  see  the  god  la  of  the  Akkadians  trans- 
ferred to  Palestine  and  Greece  as  the  god  {II  or  iSZ)-Ia, 
the  prophet  El-i-jah,  he  whose  god  (El)  is  Yah,  other- 
wise called  El-i-as.  His  temples  are  scattered  everywhere 
along  the  Syrian  coast,  and  Dean  Stanley  describes  one 
which  he  visited,  which  was  quite  void  of  images,  like 
the  temple  to  the  supreme  god  of  the  Hor-shesu  at 
Ghizeh  near  the  statue  of  the  Sphinx,  and  was  only 
marked  as  a  temple  by  the  curtain  drawn  across  the  recess 
sacred  to  the  unseen  god.^  Mohammedan  tradition,  as 
recorded  by  Masudi,  tells  us  how  Gherghis  was  sent  by  God 
during  the  life  of  Mohammed  to  convert  the  king  of  Maushil, 

^  Tide,  Outlifie  0/ the  History  ofAtuient  Religions,  *  Religion  of  the  Er.m- 
ians,'  s.  103,  p.  171.  Lenormant,  ChalcUcan  Mc^ic^  pp.  234-235.  Herod,  i.  131. 

*  Garnet!  and  Stuart- Glennie,  The  Women  of  Turkey  attd  their  Folklore, 
chap.  iv.  p.  125,  and  chap.  v.  note  on  St.  George,  p.  192. 

'  Stanley,  Sinai  ami  Palestittty  p.  274. 


ESSAY  I  13 

and  was  by  him  slain  three  times,  reviving  after  each  martyr- 
dom.^ But  this  legend  can  be  traced  in  Arabic  folk-lore  to  a 
still  earlier  source, for  IbnWahshiyah,  who  in  the  tenth  century 
A,D.,  translated  the  Nabathcean  Agriculture  of  the  Mandaite 
Kuthami  into  Arabic,  while  identifying  St.  Greorge  and 
Dumu-zi  (Tammuz),  speaks,  with  reference  to  this  story,  of 
another  Nabathcean  book  which  he  had  found,  telling  how 
Tammuz  was  put  to  death  several  times  by  a  king  whom  he 
had  summoned  to  worship  the  seven  planets,  and  the  twelve 
signs  of  the  Zodiac.^  Again,  Abu  Sayid  Wahb-ibn-Ibrahim, 
in  his  calendar  of  the  Ssabian  festivals  of  Southern  Arabia, 
says  of  the  month  Tammuz  (June-July),  '  on  the  fifteenth  of 
this  month,  or  about  the  1st  July,"*  is  the  festival  of  the 
weeping  women,  which  is  identical  with  Ta'uz,  a  festival  held 
in  honour  of  the  god  Ta'uz.^  This  festival  again  brings  us 
to  that  of  the  festival  to  Juggemath  in  Chota  Nagpore  in 
India,  which  takes  place  about  the  8tli  July,  or  just  after 
the  beginning  of  the  rainy  season,  while  the  great  national 
festivcd  to  Juggemath  at  Poori  takes  place  in  May,  during 
the  hot  season,  or  nearly  at  the  same  time  when  St.  Greorge 
or  El  Khudr  is  worshipped  at  Lydda,  and  the  Gond  Nagur 
^od  at  the  festival  of  the  Akhtuj  ;  and  in  Khudr,  as  well  as 
Gherghis,  we  see  a  survival  of  Greek  mythology,  for  while 
Gherghis  is  the  Greek  Ge-ourgos,  so  Khudr  is  the  Greek 
Hudor,  water.  The  dates  of  the  festival  to  the  rain-god  also 
mark,  as  I  show  at  greater  length  in  Essays  ii.  and  in., 
historical  changes,  for  they  hover  between  the  Gond  festival 
held  in  April  to  mark  the  beginning  of  the  Gond  year,  de- 
pending, as  I  show  in  Essay  ii.,  on  the  movements  of  the 
Pleiades,  the  Ooraon  and  Burmese  festival  to  the  water-god, 
held  at  the  time   of  the  blossoming   of  the  Sal-tree,  the 

*  Masudi,  ul^ersetzt  von  Sprenger,  p.  1 20. 

*  Gamctt  and  Stuart-Glcnnie,  Tfu  JVomen  of  Turkey  and  their  Folklore. 
Note  on  St.  George,  Horus,  and  Khudr,  p.  191-193.  Baring-Gould,  Curious 
Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages,  *  St.  George,'  pp.  276  ff. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  239,  note  i. 


14    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

parent  tree  of  the  Dravidian  races,  and  that  instituted  by 
the  star- worshipping  races,  to  mark  the  beginning  of  the 
new  and  the  end  of  the  old  year,  at  the  time  of  the 
summer  solstice,  when  the  star  Sirius,  the  Zend  Tish-trya, 
rises,  and  the  rains  in  Northern  India  begin. 

That  the  myth  of  St.  George,  with  the  accompanying 
stories  of  the  martyrdoms  and  revivals  of  Tummuz,  and  the 
launching  of  the  bark  of  the  rain-god  on  the  waters  of  the 
flood  at  the  summer  solstice,  originated  in  Northern  India, 
is  rendered  almost  certain  by  the  form  in  which  the  story  is 
told  in  the  Mahabharata.  In  the  history  of  the  descendants  of 
Nahusha  and  Yayati,  the  ancestors  of  the  five  royal  races  of 
the  Rigveda,  Kacha,  the  tortoise,  is  said  to  have  been  sent 
to  earth  by  the  gods  as  the  pupil  of  Shukra,  the  rain-god, 
to  learn  from  him  how  to  make  the  dead  live  again.  Shukra 
was  the  father  of  Deva-yanl,  the  angel  (d^va)  manifestator 
of  Ya  (tlie  Akkadian  la)  in  the  female  form,  who  sought  to 
make  Kacha  marry  her.  But  his  foes  were  the  Danavas, 
the  sons  of  Danu  slain  by  Indra  as  Vyansa,  the  thundercloud, 
wliose  king  was  Vrisha-parya,  meaning  the  season  (parva) 
of  the  life-giving  rains  (Vrisha  or  Varsha).  Kacha  was  slain 
by  them  three  times,  and  was  revived  each  time  by  the  rain- 
god  Sluikra.  The  whole  story  is  one  based  on  the  three  seasons 
of  the  year,  the  number  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  ii.,  were 
reckoned  by  the  races  who  first  introduced  plough  culture 
in  Asia  Minor,  and  it  was  tliis  reckoning  they  brought  with 
them  to  India.  It  tells  of  the  revival  of  the  thirsty  earth 
when  at  each  recurring  season  it  has  been  repealled  from  death 
by  the  life-giving  rain,  and  the  last  revival  of  Kacha  att  he 
autunni  season  of  the  vintage,  which  marked  the  close  of  the 
year  of  tlie  barley-growing  worshippers  of  the  Ashvins  at  the 
autunnial  equinox,  after  his  ashes  had  been  mixed  with 
tlie  wine  drunk  by  Shukra,  is  made  to  coincide  with  the 
abandonment  by  Shukra  and  the  worsliippers  of  the  rain-god 
of  intoxicating  drinks,  and  is  thus  connected  with  the 
religious  reform,  also  referred  to  in  the  account  of  the  seed 


ESSAY  I  15 

sown  ill  the  waters  of  the  flood  by  Manu,  which  made  the 
libations  to  the  rain-god  to  consists  not  of  spirituous  drinks, 
but  of  pure  water,  milk,  curds,  and  whey.  It  was  after  his 
final  revival  that  Kacha  went  up  to  heaven  and  became  the 
star-god  of  the  sons  of  Kush,  who  reckoned  five  seasons  in 
the  year,  marked  by  the  five-rayed  star  of  Egyptian  hiero- 


glyphics      y^      the  star  of  the  god   Horus.     Kacha  left 


Devavani  unwooed  and  unwed,  and  she  became  the  bride  of 
Yayati,and  the  mother  of  Yadu  andTur-vashu,  who  were  both 
the  ancestors  of  the  races  whose  history  I  trace  in  Essay  iii., 
and  also  the  two  seasons  added  to  the  three  of  the  earlier 
age  rej)resented  by  the  three  sons  of  Sharmishta  Yayati'^s 
other  wife,  who  was  the  daughter  of  King  Vrisha-])arva. 

It  was  the  new  races  born  of  Devayani  who  marked  the  age 
of  the  plough-god,  the  god  of  the  horned  oxen  and  the  moon 
cow  and  bull,  whose  horns  appear  on  the  Jewish  altar,  and  he 
supports  the  picture  of  the  two  cattle,  the  archer,  the  Vedic 
god  Krishanu  of  the  heavenly  bow,  and  the  ankh  or  symbol 
of  life  which  form  the  battle-standard  of  the  Assyrian  kings.^ 

The  worship  of  the  plough-god,  like  the  year  of  three 
seasons,  takes  us  back  to  Asia  Minor,  where,  as  I  show  in 
Essay  111.,  the  Iberian  race  of  the  Basques  or  Vasks,  the 
sons  of  the  Central  Asian  and  Indian  god  Vasn,  began 
to  grow  wheat  and  barley,  and  when  they  migrated  to 
India  on  one  side,  and  Europe  on  the  other,  and  founded  in 
the  latter  the  Neolithic  villages,  they  took  with  them,  as  dis- 
tinctive marks  of  the  land  whence  they  came,  the  common 
com  blue-bottle  {Ceiitaui^ea  cyamis)  and  the  Cretan  catch -fly 
(SUene  Crettca\  which,  though  indigenous  in  Asia  Minor, 
Greece,  and  Italy,  are  not  found  wild  farther  north,  though 
they  appear  with  wheat  and  barley  in  the  remains  of  Neolithic 

*  See  illustration  of  the  Standard  in  Maspero,  Ancient  Egypt  and  Assyria j 
p.  323- 


16    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

villages  in  Switzerland.^  It  was  also  from  Asia  Minor  and 
Central  Asia  that  these  Basque  cultivators  brought  the  Neo- 
lithic cattle,  tlie  Celtic  shorthorn  {Bosjrontosus)  the  domes- 
tic ox  {Bos  taunts)  the  lionied  sheep,  and  the  goat  with  the 
keeled  honis  arching  backwards,  and  the  ass,^  whose  sons,  the 
Ashvins,  or  heavenly  twins,  are  said  in  the  Rigveda  to  have 
first  sowed  barley  with  the  plough.  It  was  also  in  Asia  Minor 
that  the  worship  of  St.  George,  the  rain-god,  who  appears 
in  later  legend  as  bom  in  Cappadocia,  originated,  for  the 
high  plateau  of  Cappadocia,  the  central  table-land  of  Asia, 
dominating  the  western  side  of  the  northern  part  of  the 
Euphrates  valley  has  always  been,  both  in  ancient  and  modem 
times,  the  pasture-ground  of  numerous  flocks  of  sheep, 
and  it  is  therefore  a  country  where  fertilising  rain  is  most 
necessary.3  This  central  plateau,  and  the  valleys  of  the 
rivers  which  flow  from  it,  was  the  great  nursery  of  civilized 
man,  where,  as  I  have  shown  in  these  Essays,  the  southern 
matriarchal  races,  the  north-eastem  fire-worshippers,  miners 
and  workers  in  metal,  the  northern  sons  of  the  bull  and  the 
shepherd  races  amalgamated,  and  it  was  there  that  the  god 
who  gives  the  rain  was  first  acknowledged  to  be  the  father 
of  life  on  earth  who  maintains  his  children  by  making  the 
crops  to  grow,  and  by  thus  raising  food,  both  for  them 
and  their  flocks  and  herds  of  sheep,  goats,  and  cattle.  It 
was  here  that  the  rain-god  was  first  deified  as  the  goddess- 
mother  Sar,  the  cloud,  the  Hindu  Sara-ma  and  Saranyu, 
the  Greek  Erinyes,  the  wolf  mother  of  the  twins  Ushasa- 
nakta,  day  and  night,  whose  birth  is  recorded  in  the 
Rigveda,  but  who  was  first  the  Goddess  I^ada  of  the  Wends,* 
the  Greek  wolf  and  fire-mother  Leto,  who  bore  on  the  river 
Xanthus  or  the  Yellow  River  flowing  from  the  Cappadocian 
hills,  the  twins,  Apollo  the  god  of  day,  and  Artemis  the 

^  Boyd-Dawkins,  Early  Man  in  Britain^  chap.   viii.  p.  302.     Lubbock, 
Prehistoric  Times^  Second  Edition,  p.  205. 
'^  Boyd-Dawkins,  Early  Man  in  Britain^  chap.  viii.  pp.  297-299. 
'  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  9th  Edition,  vol.  v.  Art.  Cappadocia,  p.  75. 
*  Tide,  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Ancient  Religions^  chap.  iv.  §  1 13,  p.  185. 


ESSAY  I  17 

goddess  of  night.  The  birth  of  these  twin  gods  of  the 
yellow  race  became  in  Indian  mythology  the  birth  of  the 
god  Hari,  the  storm-god,  who  took  the  name  of  his 
mother,  Sar,  and  who  was  born  on  the  Jumna  or  Yamuna,  or 
river  of  the  twins  ( Yama),  It  was  these  people,  the  sons 
of  the  rivers,  as  the  first  colonisers  of  the  river  valleys 
called  themselves,  who  became  the  yellow  gardening-race 
who  made  the  fig-tree  of  Asia  Minor,  the  date-palm  of 
Babylon,  and  the  peach-tree  of  China  their  father  and 
mother  trees,  and  who  introduced  into  agriculture  the  fruit- 
trees  found  in  the  Neolithic  villages.  It  was  they  and  their 
allies  who,  as  the  growers  of  millets  and  barley  and  the 
feeders  of  sheep,  became  the  race  who  finally  formed  the  con- 
federacy of  the  rulers  of  the  tortoise  earth,  and  who  wen? 
grouped  round  the  mother-mountain  of  the  East,  the 
mother  of  rain,  and  there  formed    the   union   of  the  four 

triangles  ^^^/(c^  ^^  national  groups  designated  by  the  prim- 
aeval triangular  sign  which  guarded  the  fire-god  on  the 
Hindu  altar,  and  it  is  from  this  primseval  map,  as  I  have 
shown  in  Essay  iii.,  that  the  figure  of  the  tortoise  earth  was 
formed.  But  here  again  we  meet  with  the  legend  of  St. 
George,  the  rain -god,  the  knight  of  the  cross,^  for  it  was  in 
the  centre  of  the  tortoise  earth  that  the  mountain  of  the 
rain-god  stood,  and  it  is  from  the  cross  forming  the  ground- 
plan  of  the  tortoise,  with  the  pole  or  mountain  in  the  centre, 


that  the  Egyptian  star        JC     of  Horus  was  formed.    It  is 

from  the  history  of  the  symbolism  of  the  meridian-pole  stand- 
ing in  the  midst  of  the  cross  that  the  whole  legend  of  the 
cross,  as  sacred  to  the  rain-god,  arose.  The  first  cross  was  that 
drawn  on  the  Hindu  altar,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay 
ni.,  and  one  of  the  lines  of  this  cross  marked  the  path  of  the 

^  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages,  *  Legend  of  the  Cross,' 
pp.  304.  368. 

2 


i 


18     THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

rain-god  Indra  from  south-west  to  north-east,  while  the 
other,  from  north-west  to  south-east,  showed  the  path  by 
which  the  Maghadas,  or  worshippers  of  tlie  household  fire, 
entered  India.     The  cross  thus  made  was  that  called  by  us  St. 

Andrew's  Cross  ^^  ,  and  it  is  from  it  that  the  Swastika,  or 
sacred  sign  of  the  fire-god,  was  derived.  This        I     V  denoted 

^        I 

the  four  triangles  formed  by  placing  an  upright  cross — ^ 

the  sign  of  the  fire-god  which  marked  the  four  quarters  of  the 
heavens  with  the   meridian-pole  indicating  the  north    and 


* 


south,  on  the  original  St.  Andrew's  cross  thus  ""^lc"°-      This 

figure  formed  the  eight-rayed  star  used  as  the  sign  of  God 
in  the  oldest  Akkadian  inscriptions  at  Girsa.  By  joining 
A  and  B,  C  D,  E  F,  G  H  together,  the  four  triangles,  symbol- 
ising the  four  united  nations,  are  completed.  The  four 
triangles  became  the  Greek  Cross,  a  sign  sacred  to  the 
Assyrians,  as  it  appears  on  the  breast  of  an  effigy  of  Tiglath- 
Pileser  in  the  British  Museum.  St.  George's  Cross,  as  de- 
picted on  the  funeral  urns  in  the  cemetery  of  the  Bronze 


Age    at    Villanova,   near   Bologna,  ^^^^3  is    formed    by 

the  junction  of  four  parallelograms,  made  by  placing  the 
three   sides   of  the  triangles  of  the  Greek  Cross  side   by 

side,  thus     \^      and  these  parallelograms   represent  the 

union  of  the  two  sacred  triangles  which  formed  the  four- 
squared  figure,  the  oblong  altar  sacred  to  the  fire-god,^ 
which  is  said  in  the  Rigveda  to  have  conquered  the  triangles 

^  This  four-sided  altar,  formed  of  the  two  triangles,  was  that  sacred  to  the 
race  of  the  Ashura  who  believed  in  the  divinity  of  pairs,  and  added  three 
father>gods  to  the  three  primaeval  mother-goddesses. 


ESSAY  I  19 

of  the  earlier  mother-goddesses,  while  the  lines  of  the  inner 
cross  represent  the  four  rivers  descending  from  the  centre 
Mother  Mountain,  the  Oxus  or  Gihon,  the  Indus,  Jumna, 
and  Ganges,  which  watered  the  empire  of  the  Kushika  rulers 
of  Northern  India,  and  the  five  circles  represent  the  four  eggs 
or  triangles  of  the  Greek  Cross,  the  four  united  races,  and  the 
place  of  the  meridian -pole  or  mother-mountain  where  the 
worid'^s  egg  was  laid.  The  great  antiquity  and  wide  diffusion 
of  the  whole  series  of  conceptions  represented  by  the  diflferent 
forms  of  the  cross  is  proved  by  the  following  instances: 
St.  Greorge'^s  Cross  is  traced  on  one  of  two  cinerary  urns 
taken  from  between  two  beds  of  volcanic  trap  on  the  Alban 
Mount,  near  Rome,  while  the  other  bears  the  sign  of  the 

Swastika   &=:=],  thus  showing  that  the  cross  was  a  sacred 

symbol  in  the  very  remote  ages,  quite  forgotten  by  local 
tradition,  when  the  Alban  Mount  was  an  active  volcano. 
St,  George's  Cross  is  also  found  on  cinerary  urns  of  the  Bronze 
Age  in  the  ancient  cemeteries  of  a  pile-village  at  Villanova, 
in  the  Commune  of  Sta.  Maria  delle  Caselle,  near  Bologna, 
and  also  in  that  of  Golasecca.^  The  cross  was  also  the  symbol 
of  the  rain-god  Quia-teot  among  the  Mayas,  the  ancient  race 
who  preceded  that  of  the  Toltecs  as  rulers  of  Mexico,  and 
children  of  both  sexes  were  sacrificed  to  him  to  procure  rain, 
and  their  flesh  devoured  by  the  chiefs,  just  in  the  same 
way  as  I  have  shown  in  Essays  ii.  and  iii.  human  sacrifices 
were  offered  everywhere  by  the  yellow  race  throughout  India, 
South-Westem  Asia,  and  Greece,  and  it  is  from  this  custom 
that  man  is  declared  in  the  Brahmanas  to  be  the  first  of 
sacrificial  animals,  and  the  altar  on  which  he  was  sacrificed 
was  that  made  to  represent  the  mother  earth,  marked  and 
consecrated  by  the  cross  to  the  rain  and  fire  god.  It  was 
from  this  god  Quia-teot   that  the  Mexican  rainy  month, 

^  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages  :  *  The  Legend  of  the 
Cross/  p.  371. 


i 


20    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Quia-huitl,  received  its  name ;  and  the  cross  was  worshipped 
as  the  symbol  of  water,  the  generator,  at  Cibolia,  while  the 
introduction  of  the  sign  and  ritual  of  the  cross  was  ascribed 
by  the  Toltecs  to  their  god  Quetzalcoatl.  The  cross  at 
Palenque,  in  Yucatan,  with  the  image  of  the  sacred  bird 
perched  on  it,^  brings  us  again  back  to  the  Gond  legend 
of  the  Bindo-bird  that  brings  the  rain.  It  is  through  this 
bird  that  we  find  a  complete  explanation  of  the  origin 
and    sanctity    of   the   cross  symbol.      The    earliest    cross 


was    undoubtedly   the   Tau    Cross 


This    repre- 


sented the  fire-drill  and  the  socket,  and  was  sacred  to  the 
fire-god  as  the  miraculous  producer  of  life-giving  heat.  But 
among  the  confederacy  who  made  the  mother-mountain  of 
the  East  their  centre,  and  depicted  the  South-West  monsoon 
as  the  storm-bird  who  brings  the  rain,  the  messenger 
of  the  Almighty,  the  mother  of  life  on  earth,  and  the 
layer  of  the  world'^s  egg,  from  whence  the  sons  of  the 
tortoise  race  were  bom,  this  original  symbol  of  the  father 

and  mother  of  fire  became  the  '  ankh  **     H  P     sacred    to 

the  Babylonians  and  Egyptians.  This,  as  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  iii.,  is  proved  by  the  vignette  depicting  its  adora- 
tion and  assumption  to  heaven  in  the  Papyrus  of  Ani 
to  represent  the  infusion  of  the  seed  of  life  by  the  fire-god 
into  the  worWs  egg,  whence  the  men  of  the  red  race  are 
to  be  bom.  It  is  this  pictorial  myth  which  is  exactly  re- 
produced in  the  legend  told  in  the  Mahabharata  of  the  birth 
of  the  blind  king,  Dhritarashtra,  and  the  laying  of  the  egg 
by  his  wife  Gandhari,  whence  the  Kauravya  or  tortoise  race 
were  born.  Vyansa,  as  I  have  shown  a  few  pages  back,  is 
said  in  the  Rigveda  to  be  the  father  of  Indra,  and  he  repre- 
sents the  storm-cloud  impregnated  by  the  lightning  flash,  the 

^  Baridg-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages :  *  The  Legend  of  the 
Cross,'  p.  371. 


ESSAY  I  21 

heavenly  fire-god  Agni.  He,  in  the  Mahabharata,  becomes 
Vyasa,  meaning,  like  the  name  Sebek  of  the  Egyptian  Maga 
crocodile,  the  uniter.  He  is  the  priest-god  of  the  alligator 
race  of  the  Maghadas,  worshippers  of  the  household  fire,  the 
son  of  the  Rishi  Para-shara,  the  overhanging  (para)  cloud 
(stiaraX  and  it  is  he,  described  as  *the  black  and  terrible 
priest,**  who  is  called  in  by  his  mother,  Satyavatl,  the  sister 
of  the  fish-god,  to  be  the  father  of  the  son  of  Ambika,  the 
wife  of  his  deceased  and  childless  half-brother,  Vichittra 
Virya,  meaning  the  virile  energy  {viryd)  of  the  two  colours 
or  races  {chittra\  the  Maghadas  and  Kushikas,  as  we  are 
told  in  the  duplicate  story  of  the  same  alliance  described  in 
the  birth  of  Jarasandha.  The  son  of  the  united  races  was, 
in  the  story  I  am  now  telling,  called  Dhritarashtra,  meaning 
he  who  holds  the  kingdom  together  and  was  bom  blind ; 
that  is,  he  became  the  fire-drill  which  impregnated  the 
world's  egg  laid  by  his  wife  Gandhari,  from  whence  the 
Kauravya  were  bom.  Her  brother  is  Shakuna,  the  kite  or 
the  storm-bird.  From  this  story,  when  compared  with  the 
Egyptian  evidence,  the  whole  history  of  the  sanctity  of  the 
*  ankh,**  as  the  sign  of  life,  is  clear ;  and  the  meaning  and 
origin  of  the  myth  is  made  still  more  manifest  when  we 
consider  the  meaning  of  the  name  Gan-dharl  and  compare 
her  with  the  gods  of  popular  Hindu  theology.  Her  name 
means  she  who  wets  (dhdri)  the  sacred  enclosure  (ffan): 
that  is,  the  worWs  spring  from  whence  the  rivers  of  the 
tortoise  earth  rise,  which  gives  life  to  the  holy  birth- 
land  of  the  Kushite  race,  described  in  Essay  iii.,  and  she  is 
thus  seen  to  be  the  goddess  Dhar  or  Dharti,  whom  I  also 
show  in  the  same  Essay  to  be  universally  worshipped  through- 
out the  hill-country  of  Western  Bengal  as  the  goddess  of 
the  springs  of  living  water.  We  can  thus,  in  this  series  of 
mythic  symbols  of  the  rain-god,  trace  the  cross  from  being  the 
sign  of  the  fire-father  and  mother  to  be  that  which  depicts 
the  impregnation  of  the  world  or  tribal  egg.  This  latter, 
when  history  was  elaborated  by  the  amalgamation  of  allied 


22    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

races,  became  the  sacred  triangle  representing  the  union  of 
three  races,  the  three  seasons  of  the  year  and  their  parent 
gods.  When  the  confederation  of  the  sons  of  the  tortoise 
became  the  rulers  of  the  civilised  world  this  primaeval  triangle 
became  the  Greek  Cross  of  four  triangles,  or  the  four  eggs  of 
the  four  allied  races  who  united  round  the  sacred  mountain^ 
the  home  of  the  rain-god,  the  blind  father  king  of  the  sons 
of  the  house  of  heaven.  This  conception  of  the  world's  egg 
originated,  like  the  name  and  attributes  of  Istar,  from  the 
theology  of  the  Ugro-Finns,  who  believe  heaven  to  be  made 
out  of  a  severed  egg,  of  which  the  earth  is  the  yolk,  the 
heavens  the  upper  shell,  and  the  ocean  the  albumen.^  And 
hence  we  find  that  some  of  St.  George^s  crosses  at  Villanova 


are  depicted  F^4=H  as  enclosed  in  the  prima?val  egg-shell. 


We  thus  learn  that  the  fire-worshippers,  and  those  who 
looked  on  the  primaeval  ocean  as  the  home  of  life,  were  the 
two  races  who  elaborated  the  theologies  of  the  fire-god  and 
the  water-god.  These  were  first  rival  doctrines,  as  is  shown 
in  the  story  told  by  Khasisadra,  the  father  of  life,  who  was 
saved  in  the  Akkadian  Flood  legend,  to  the  men  of  Surippak, 
*  That  Bil-gi,  the  fire-god,  hates  me,  and  that  it  is  to  escape 
him  that  I  will  go  to  the  ancient  waters  and  live  with  la.** 

It  was  from  the  belief  in  the  life-giving  waters  as  the 
author  of  life  that  the  cult  of  the  prophet  fish-god  arose. 
This,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  was  first  developed  in  India, 
where  the  conception  was  naturally  engendered  by  the  annual 
recurrence  of  the  apparent  miracle  of  the  birth  of  the  fish 
from  the  life-giving  rain.  For  it  is  there  that  water-tanks 
formed  by  excavations,  or  by  throwing  dams  across  the 
hollows  between  two  hills  or  rising  grounds,  are,  though 
dried  up  every  year  by  the  heat  of  the  dry  season,  found 
to  be  swarming  with  fish  as  soon  as  they  are  filled  by 
the  rains.      These   fish,  as   Sir   Emerson   Tennant   proved 

^  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages  :  *  Shamir,*  pp.  386  ff. 


ESSAY  I  23 

by  actual  experiment  in  Ceylon,  have  been  hibernating 
during  the  dry  season  in  the  mud;  but  to  those  who 
had  not  investigated  the  true  cause  of  the  phenomena, 
the  fish  who  thus  come  to  life  simultaneously  with  the 
advent  of  the  rains,  must  have  appeared  as  the  heaven-sent 
offspring  of  the  rain-god  sent  on  earth  to  teach  his  children. 
This  myth  was  expanded  on  reaching  the  foreign  settlements 
founded  by  the  sons  of  the  fish  in  their  maritime  voyages, 
and  thus  the  ship  drawn  by  the  fish -god  in  the  Indian 
legend  of  the  Flood,  and  in  that  of  the  founding  of  Delphi 
by  the  priests,  whose  ship  was  led  by  Apollo,  the  Dolphin 
(SeX^t?)  becfune  the  sacred  vehicle  or  ark  of  the  gods  both 
in  Assyria  and  Egj'])t.  This  ark  was  the  dolphin  fish,  the 
'delphus"*  or  womb  whence  the  royal  and  priestly  races  of  the 
ancient  world  were  born.  She  was  the  goddess  mother,  called 
in  the  Mahabhurata  Satya  VatI,  she  who  is  possessed  of 
truth  {Satiya\  the  twin-sister  of  Matsya,  the  fish-god.  She 
and  her  brother  were  the  children  of  the  god  Vasu  oi*  Varsu, 
the  rain-god,  miraculously  born  from  the  fish  into  which  the 
Apsara  or  cloud-maiden,  named  Adrika,  the  rock,  was 
changed,  thus  showing  how  the  mountain-mother  became 
the  fish-mother.^  It  was  she  who  was  the  mother  of  the 
Uishi  Vyasa,  and  the  grandmother  of  the  ruling  races  of 
the  Kauravya  or  sons  of  the  tortoise,  and  their  rivals, 
conquerors,  and  successors,  the  Pandavas.  She  became 
the  fish-mother,  worshipped  as  Derceto  or  Tir-gata,  in 
Syria,^  Aphrodite  in  Greece,  and,  according  to  Herodotus, 
as  Mylitta  in  Syria,  and  Alytta  in  Arabia.^  In  Arabia 
her  name,  as  Professor  Tiele  shows,  was  AUat,*  where  she 
became  the  light-moon,  or  the  heavenly  ship  of  light. 
This  is  the  same  name  as  that  of  tlie  Assyrian  goddess 
Allat,  meaning  the  '  unwearied  one,**  who  was  queen  of  the 

^  MahabharatS  Adi  (Adivansavatarna)  Parva,  Ixiii. 
'  Lucian,  De  Dea^  Syria j  chap.  xiv. 

*  Herod.  I.  131. 

*  Tide,  Otttline  of  the  History  of  Ancient  Keii^^ons  :  *  Primitive  Arabian 
Religion,'  pp.  63,  64. 


24    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

ghost  world,  and  who  was  known  to  the  Akkadians  as 
Nin-lil,*  or  the  lady  of  magic  (Zi/),  and  who  was  thus 
a  developed  form  of  the  second  great  goddess  of  the 
Himyaritic  Sabsean  Arabs,  called  El-makah,*  who  was 
originally  the  mother  Mag  or  Maga,  the  magic  mother,  who 
gave  her  name  of  Mag-ana,  or  the  goddess  Mag,  to  the 
Sinaitic  Peninsula.  But  it  is  in  her  ritual  and  in  that  of 
the  male  fish-god  that  the  process  of  the  evolution  of  her 
worship  can  be  traced,  for  her  priests  were  the  Galli  or 
Eunuchs,  who  wore  women'^s  dresses,  while  it  was  w}thin  her 
temples  that,  as  we  are  told  by  Herodotus,  every  Babylonian 
woman  was  obliged  once  in  her  life  to  prostitute  herself.  She 
was,  in  short,  the  goddess  mother  of  the  village  grove,  whose 
cult  I  have  described  in  Essay  in.,  and  who  can  be  traced  as 
the  fish-mother  to  Cyprus  and  Asia  Minor  in  the  mythic 
names  cited  by  Dr.  Sayce  in  his  lecture  on  Istar  and  Tammuz. 
Thus  the  king  of  the  Tauric  Chersonesus,  who  sacrificed 
strangers  to  Artemis,  was  called  Thoas,  and  he  was  the 
Sabaean  Ta''az,  whom  I  have  already  identified  with  Tammuz, 
and  his  name,  which  becomes  in  the  Cyprian  legend  Kinyras, 
shows  him  again  to  be  the  parent  of  Tammuz,  for  the  name 
Kinyras  is  only  a  corruption  of  Gin-giri,  the  Creatrix,  one  of 
the  Akkadian  names  of  Istar.  He  is,  in  short,  the  male 
form  of  Istar,  substituted  by  the  patriarchal  races  for  the 
mother-goddess.  She,  in  the  legend  of  Thoas  and  Kinyras, 
appears  as  Myrrha  or  Smyrna,  who  is  the  mother  of  Adonis, 
whose  name,  derived  from  the  Phoenician  Adonic  my  lord,  is 
that  of  the  Greek  Tammuz.  Myrrha  or  Smyrna  is  identical 
with  the  bi-sexual  Babylonian  queen  goddess  Semiramis,  who 
was  the  fish-goddess  and  god,  to  whom  the  dove  released  by 
the  son  of  the  fish-god  from  the  ark  was  sacred.'  The  fish- 
god  was  the  god  to  whom  human  sacrifices  were  offered,  and 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887  ;  Lect.  iii.  p.  149. 
'^  Tide,  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Ancient  Religions  :  *The  Sabaeans,' 
s.  48,  p.  79. 

'  Sayce,  Hihhert  Lectures  for  1887  ;  Lect.  iv.  pp.  227,  235-6,  271. 


ESSAY  I  25 

he  was  the  fire-god  worshipped  in  Syria  as  Moloch,  meaning 
the  king,  the  god  of  the  yellow  races,  whose  priests  were  women 
dressed  as  men,^  like  the  Amazonian  warrior  priestesses  of 
the  Ephesian  Artemis.  But  the  myth  of  the  fish-god,  the 
prophet  and  teacher  of  heavenly  lore,  who,  like  the 
Akkadian  la,  came  clothed  in  a  fish-skin,  and  borne  in  a  ship 
to  Eridu,  where  he  taught  the  lessons  of  civilisation  to  the 
land  visited  by  the  seafaring  sons  of  Kush  or  Kur,  the 
tortoise,  is  not  confined  to  Asia  and  Europe,  but  we  find  it, 
like  the  myth  of  the  rain-god,  transferred  to  Mexico  and 
North  America.  There  the  North-American  Indians  say  they 
were  brought  from  Northern  Asia  by  a  man-fish,  while  the 
Mexican  god  Teo-cipactli  was  a  fish-god.  His  full  name  is 
Huehueton-cateo-acateo-cipactli,  meaning  the  fish -god  of 
our  flesh  ;  and  it  was  he  who,  like  the  Akkadian  Damu-zi, 
who  after^'ards  became  la,  was  saved  in  the  bark  of  cypress 
wood,  which  he  launched  on  the  waters  of  the  flood.^  Part 
at  least  of  the  path  by  which  the  emigration  of  these  sons 
of  the  fish  from  Asia  to  America  was  effected  can  be  traced 
by  the  discovery  of  the  absolute  identity  of  a  very  large 
number  of  the  ancient  Chinese  and  Akkadian  syllabic  signs 
which  has  been  made  by  Mr.  Ball,  and  the  absolute  identity 
of  the  Akkadian  and  American  mythological  traditions,  which 
I  have  already  cited,  make  it  all  but  absolutely  certain  that 
the  emigrations  of  the  sons  of  Kur,  the  tortoise,  extended  to 
America  as  well  as  Asia  and  Europe. 

But  the  historical  evidence  showing  the  descent  of  the 
water-mother  and  father  and  their  offspring  is  not  yet  ex- 
hausted, for  we  find,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  that  the 
worshippers  of  the  mountain  -  goat,  the  god  Uz,  brought 
from  the  plateau  of  Asia  Minor,  became,  as  they  settled  in 
the  plain  country  watered  by  the  rivers,  the  worshippers 
and  sons  of  Terah,  the  antelope,  wlio  became  Dara  among 
the   Akkadians,   and  who    was  the  deer-god,   the   Ilishya, 

'  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages :  *  Melusina,*  p.  496. 
-  Jl'id.  p.  501. 


26    THE  RULING  RACES  OE  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

or  antelope,  who  was  the  totemistic  parent  of  the  Indian 
Brahmins.  It  is  the  deer-mother  called  PrishatI,  the 
heavenly  antelope  or  bearing  (peru)  mother,  who  draws  in 
the  Rigveda  the  chariot  of  the  Maruts  or  wind-goddesses,^ 
who  bring  up  the  i*ain-bearing  south-west  (jnartu)  wind,  and 
who  are  the  daughters  of  Prishnl.  It  is  the  antelope- 
mother,  the  Akkadian  Dara,  who  is  worshipped  in  Bengal 
as  Dharti,  the  goddess  of  the  springs,  and  who  became  Gan- 
dhari,  or  the  mother  of  the  Kushite  race.  She  appears  in 
the  Ramayana  as  Kaush-aloya,  the  house  {aloya)  of  Kush, 
the  wife  of  Dasaratha,  the  ten  (dasa)  chariots  (ratJia)  or 
months  of  gestation,  and  as  the  mother  of  Rama,  the 
father-god  of  the  Western  Shus,  whom  I  have  shown  to  be 
the  great  trading  race  of  Western  India  and  the  Euphratean 
Delta.  It  is  he  who  appears  in  Hebrew  mythology  as 
Ab-ram,  the  father  (ab)  Ram,  the  son  of  Terah,  the  ante- 
lope, who  traced  his  descent  to  Ur,  in  the  Euphratean 
Delta,  the  city  called  Surippak  in  the  Akkadian  Flood 
story,  whence  Khasisadra  or  Dumu-zi  started  on  his  voyage 
across  the  waters  of  the  flood.  It  is  he  who  was  worshipped 
by  the  Assyrian  Semites  as  Ram-anu,  the  god  (an)  Ram, 
the  sun-god  Hadad  or  la,  the  beloved  (dad)  Rimmon,  wliose 
annual  departure  and  rebirth  as  the  rain-god,  is  said  bv 
Zechariah  to  have  been  mourned  like  that  of  Tammuz  in 
the  valley  of  Megiddo,^  in  the  plain  of  Jezreel.  He  is  the 
Akkadian  god  Mer-mer,  whose  reduplicated  name  is  repro- 
duced   in  the   Ram-ram    of  the   Hindus,   and  whose   sign 


in  Cuneiform  script    •  1  >^T      I  >- ]     proclaims  him  as  the 


Creator  who  creates  by  reduplicating  himself.^  This  father- 
god  Ram  was  married  to  the  cloud-goddess  of  the  Caucasus, 
Sar  or  Sara,  the  Sar*'-anyu  of  the  Hindus,  and  became  the 

1  Rigveda,  v.  55,  6 ;  58,  6. 

'  Zech.  xii.  11. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary ^  No.  281. 


ESSAY  I  27 

father  of  Isaac,  who  was  like  Dhritarashtra,  the  blind  meridian- 
pole,  the  father  of  the  goat-god  Uz  or  Esau,  and  of  Jacob 
the  supplanter,  who  married  the  daughters  of  Laban,  the 
moon-god  of  Harran.^  Ra-ma,  or  the  mother  (ma)  of  Ila, 
who  became  in  Semitic  patriarchal  mythology,  the  father-god 
Ram  takes  us  to  the  Letto,  Slav,  or  Wend  god,  Rai,  the  god 
of  the  bright  sky,^  who  was  brought  to  India  by  the 
Maghadas,  the  worshippers  of  the  household  fire,  and  is  still 
worshipped  by  the  Dosadhs,  the  priests  of  the  fire-god  as 
Ra-hu,  the  creating  (hu)  Ra,  and  it  was  he  who  became  in 
Egypt  the  god  Ra,  whose  worship  was  introduced  together 
with  that  of  the  Maga  alligator-god  Sebek. 

It  is  this  mythology  of  the  worship  of  Ra  which  was  the 
offspring  of  the  union  of  all  the  tribes  of  the  civilised  earth 
round  the  meridian  pole  of  the  tortoise  earth,  the  mother 
mountain  of  the  East.  This  was  accomplished  under  the 
rule  of  Rama,  meaning  '  the  darkness  ^  in  Sanskrit  and  '  the 
heights^  in  Hebrew,  who  was  otherwise  called  Varuna,  the 
god  of  the  rain  {var),  the  cloud,  or  the  dark  night,  and  it 
was  under  his  rule  that  the  sons  of  Shem,  meaning  the  name, 
were  born.  It  is  this  sacred  name  which  appears  in  the 
myth  of  Shamir  the  wonder-stone,  the  Sala-gramma  of  the 
Hindus,  which  enabled  Solomon,  or  Sal- man u  the  fish-god 
to  build  the  house  of  God  without  the  use  of  hewn  stone. 
In  the  Bible  story  of  the  Septuagint,  Solomon  is  said  to 
have  built  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  with  Xldot^  aKporoiMot^^ 
or  rough  unhewn  stone,^  but  in  the  Arabic  legend,  from 
which  the  story  arose,  he  is  said  to  have  cut  the  stones  with 
Shamir.  The  story  how  Shamir  was  procured  takes  us  back 
to  the  days  of  historic  myths,  ages  before  the  date  assigned 
to  Solomon,  the  king  of  Judah,  in  our  chronology,  to  the 
days  of  the  birth  of  Danu  the  judge,  the  father  of  the  race 

*  Sayce,  Hibhcrt  Lectures  for  1887  ;  Lect.  iv.,  p.  249,  note. 

*  Tide,  Outlines  of  Ancient  Religions  :  *  Religion  among  the  Wends,' 
p.  82. 

3  Baring-Gould,  CuHous  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages  :  *  Shamir,'  pp.  386  ff. 


A 


28    THK  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

of  the  circumcision,  wedded  by  that  ceremony  to  the  mother 
earth,  and  the  age  of  the  empire  of  Kushite  race.  The 
legend  tells  how  Solomon  sent  Benaiah  with  a  chain  on 
which  was  written  the  magic  word, '  Shem  hammphorash,** 
a  fleece  of  wool  and  a  skin  of  wine,  to  find  Asmodeus  who 
knew  where  Shamir  was  hidden.  Asmodeus  was  to  be  found 
drinking  from  a  huge  cistern  he  had  dug  on  a  distant 
mountain.  Benaiah  undermined  the  cistern  and  made  a 
hole  in  it.  He  then  let  the  water  off^,  and  plugged  up  the 
hole  with  the  fleece  of  wool.  He  then  poured  in  the  wine 
in  the  place  of  the  water.  When  Asmodeus  came,  and  was 
compelled  by  thirst,  although  he  suspected  some  guile, 
to  drink  the  wine,  Benaiah  seized  him  when  drunk  and 
brought  him  in  the  magic  chain  to  Solomon.  Asmodeus 
told  Solomon  how  the  Prince  of  the  Sea  had  given  the  worm 
or  snake  Shamir  to  the  moor-hen  who  had  taken  it  to  the 
tops  of  the  mountains,  split  the  rocks  with  it,  and  injected 
the  seeds  of  living  plants  into  the  soil  thus  obtained. 
Hence  she  obtained  her  name  of  Nugger  Tura.  Whoever 
wants  to  find  Shamir,  must  find  the  moor-hen'*s  nest,  and 
cover  it  with  glass.  She,  to  get  at  her  young,  would  fetch 
Shamir  to  break  the  glass,  and  when  it  was  brought  Solomon 
could  then  get  it.  Benaiah  went  to  the  mountain,  found 
the  nest,  shouted  to  frighten  away  the  moor-hen  and 
covered  it  with  glass,  when  the  moor-hen  brought  Shamir 
and  placed  it  on  the  glass  Benaiah  took  it.  According  to 
a  variant  of  the  legend,  the  name  of  the  demon  who  told  the 
secret  to  Solomon  was  Sak-kar,  and  the  bird  who  brought 
Shamir  to  her  nest  was  the  raven.  Shamir,  or  the  snake 
which  was  brought,  is  said  in  the  Talmud  to  be  as  big  as  a 
barley-corn,  to  have  been  created  in  the  six-days  of  the 
Creation,  and  kept  in  a  box,  like  the  treasure  of  Pandora  in 
the  Greek  legend.  ^Elian  tells  us  how  the  bird  called  c7ro^, 
the  hoopoe,  knew  of  a  plant  called  Troa,  meaning  grass,  which 
enabled  her  to  split  the  plaster  placed  over  a  hole  in  the 
wall  where  she  had  made  her  nest. 


ESSAY  I  '29 

Now  in  this  legend  and  its  variants  we  have  a  complete 
reproduction  of  a  large  part  of  the  mythic  history  which  I 
have  traced  in  these  essays  from  the  records  of  past  ages. 
We  have  Solomon  the  fish-god  who  speaks  by  the  mouth  of 
his  prophet,  shown  by  the  fleece  of  wool  to  belong  to  the 
race  of  shepherds,  and  these  learn  their  secret  from  the  god 
called  Ash-modeus,  the  Aeshma-deva  of  the  Iranians,   the 
Ash-or  or  fish  god  of  the  Assyrians,  and  of  the  Hindu  Ash- 
ura.     He  is  the  god   of  the  six  (Akkadian  Ash)  creating 
powers,  or  the  six  days  of  Creation,  and  it  is  by  observing 
the  processes  of  creation  that  he  has  become  the  depositary 
of  all  wisdom.     He  is  also  the  Sak-kar,  or  rain-god,  the 
Shuk-ra,  Sak-ra,  or  Sak-ko  of  the  Hindus,  the  Suk-us  of  the 
Akkadians,  represented  by  the  five  parents  of  life,  the  five 
seasons  of  the  Hindu   year,  the   stars  guarding  the  four 
quarters  of  the  heavens  and  the  meridian  pole,  on  which  was 
perched  the  moor- bird  who  laid  the  worWs  egg,  who  knew 
the  secret  of  the  sacred  grass,  the  Troa  of  the  Greek  story, 
and  theKusha  or  Kush  grass  of  Indian  historical  mythology. 
This    was   the   bird    called    Nugger  Tura  or  the  meridian 
creating  pole  (iur)  of  the  Naga  snake.     The  Shamir,  which 
broke  the  glass  or  ice  placed  over  her  nest,  was  the  power  of 
the  tire  sun-god,  who  broke  the  ice  of  winter  by  his  rays ;  and 
the  produce  of  the  eggs  of  the  wonder-bird  were  the  wonder- 
working words  of  the  ordainer  of  the  times  and  seasons, 
the  Creator  who  spoke  the  word  which  brought  light  from 
darkness,  and  life  and  order  from  chaos  and  death.     In  the 
story  of  the  beguilement  of  Ash-modeus  we  find  a  repetition 
of  the  ancient  belief  in  the  prophetic  powers  of  the  intoxi- 
cated priest,  and  in  that  of  the  all-powerful  snake  Shamir  a 
picture  of  the  growth  of  the  seeds  which  pierce  the  ground 
under  which  they  are  buried  and  send  into  the  upper  air 
the  shoots,  whose  roots  can  split  the  hardest  rocks.     The 
whole  legend  is  a  parable,  telling  how  the  true  temple  of  God 
is  built  with  the  unhewn  stones  of  knowledge,  each  being 
marked  with  the  Shem  or  name  which  shows  that  he  who 


d 


30    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

used  them  knows  their  true  meaning.  It  was  the  sons  of 
Shem  or  the  name,  the  offspring  of  the  fish  god  who  were 
taught  true  knowledge  by  his  prophet  messengers,  and  it 
was  the  red  man  Adam,  the  first  of  the  composite  race,  the 
youngest  but  wisest  of  the  sons  of  men,  who  learnt  from 
the  accumulated  teachings  of  past  ages  and  his  own  powers 
of  observation  and  assimilation,  to  select,  combine  and 
classify,  to  compare  and  differentiate  natural  objects  and 
phenomena,  and  who  thus  acquired  the  art  of  naming,  which 
is  the  foundation  of  all  scientific  inquiry.  It  was  these  people 
who  could  give  names  to  birds,  beasts,  and  plants,  to  the 
seasons  and  their  changes,  who  proceeded  to  inquire  further 
into  the  causes  which  produced  life,  and  who,  when  they  found 
the  generative  theories  of  its  origin  which  were  current  in 
popular  theology  insufficient,  began  to  study  the  heavens, 
whence  God's  best  gifts,  the  life-giving  rain  and  sunlight, 
descended,  and  it  was  from  these  studies  that  the  measure- 
ment of  time  was  reckoned,  first  by  the  observation  of  the 
periods  of  gestation,  and  the  changes  of  the  moon  which 
marked  them,  next  by  the  stars,  the  recurrence  of  the 
weekly  periods  of  seven  days,  and  the  number  of  lunar 
changes  which  marked  the  inter\'als  between  the  summer 
and  winter  solstices.  The  results  of  these  observations 
were  summed  up  in  the  eleven  months  sacred  to  the  gods 
of  generation,  the  history  of  which  1  have  given  in  Essay  iii. 
and  IV.,  and  in  the  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months,  which  was 
subsequently  superseded  by  the  more  exact  solar  year,  and 
the  whole  series  of  changes  denoted  by  the  several  stages  in 
the  progress  of  the  scientific  inquiry  thus  begun,  up  to  the 
adoption  of  solar  chronology,  are  detailed  in  the  subsequent 
essays. 

But  the  evidence  proving  the  order  in  which  this  series  of 
primaeval  historical  changes  succeeded  one  another  proves 
also  that  they  were  produced  by  the  alliance  of  originally 
alien  tribes,  who,  if  they  had  a  common  origin,  had  been 
separated  for  ages  before  they  met  in  their  wanderings  over 


ESSAY  I  31 

the  face  of  the  earth,  and  formed  confederated  alliances.    This 
conclusion  is  confirmed  by  the  cerebral  differences  and  marks 
of  fusion  shown  by  the  skulls  and  skeletons  found  in  the 
tombs  of  the  Neolithic  and  Bronze  Ages,  and  also  by  the  evi- 
dence of  linguistic  changes.  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iil  how  the 
presence  in  Vedic  Sanskrit  of  the  Dravidian  cerebral  letters 
proves  that  the  people  who  had  made  this  form  of  Aryan 
speech  their  mother  tongue  had  before  spoken  a  Dravidian 
language,  and  a  similar  conclusion  can  be  drawn  from  the 
interchange  of  letters  in  European  and  Asiatic  tongues  and 
from    the    skeletons    of    the    primaeval    races.        Ancient 
ethnology,  as  set  forth  in  the  Edda  and  tlie  Rigveda,  tells  us 
of  the  short,  dark,  noseless  or  snub-nosed  race  who  tilled  the 
ground,  and  who  were  the  Dasyus  of  the  Rigveda,  and  the 
Thyr  of  the  Edda — the  later  German  Dime,  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  Thralls.^     It  also  tells  us  of  their  conquerors,  who  are 
described  in  the  Edda  as  fair-haired,  blue-eyed,  and  tall. 
From  the  skeletons  and  portraits  found  in  Neolithic  tombs, 
we  learn  that  the  Basque  cultivating  race,  which  was  then 
dominant  in  Europe,  was  small  in  stature,  averaging  about 
5   feet   5    inches    high,   dark   in    complexion,    with    black 
hair  and  eyes,  and  a  long  head.^    The  cranial  capacity  of  the 
Basques  or  cultivating  race  of  the  NeoHtliic  Age  in  Europe, 
is  shown  in  De  Quatrefages**  tables  to  correspond  with  that 
of  the  Chinese,  the  yellow  people,  and  the  great  gardening 
and   farming   race   of    Asia.     But   these   people   were   the 
successors  of  the  long-headed  race  of  the  Palaeolithic  Age, 
whose  direct  descendants  are  found  in  the  Neolithic  dolicho- 
cephalic men  of  the  cave  Homme  Mort  in  Southern  France, 
whose  skeletons,  though  still,  like  those  of  the  Palaeolithic 
men,  tall,  show  in  the  diminution  of  height,  the  modifica- 
tions of  the  face  and  certain   osteological    characteristics, 

*  Penka,  Origines  AriaccCy  Chap.  i.  p.  22. 

*  Boyd-Dawkins,    Early  Man    in  Britain^   Chap.    ix.    *The   Neolithic 
Inhabitants  of  Britain  of  Iberian  Race,*  pp.  310,  315. 


32    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

evidence  of  intercrossing  with  a  shorter  race.i  Races  of 
this  dolichocephalic  parentage  survive  in  the  long-headed 
Spanish  Basques,  while  on  the  other  hand  the  French 
Basques  of  Aquitaine  are  round-headed  and  brachycephalic,^ 
and  belong  to  the  race  of  round-lieaded  Slavonic  Finns 
whose  remains  are  those  most  frequently  found  in  the  round 
barrows  of  the  Bronze  Age.^  It  was  these  people  who  were 
the  fire- worshippers,  who  with  their  northern  allies  of  the 
bull  race  introduced  the  worship  of  the  mother  goddess 
Maga,  whose  religion  was  founded  on  magic,  and  who 
originated  the  burnt-offerings  to  the  fire  god.  It  was  the 
mixed  races  formed  by  the  union  of  these  eastern  round- 
headed  tribes,  with  the  long-headed  agriculturists  of  the 
Indian  forest  races,  and  the  Palaeolithic  hunters  of  the 
north,  who  first,  as  the  long-headed  swarthy  Basques  of  the 
Neolithic  Age,  and  afterwards  as  the  round-headed  Finns, 
the  metal  workers  of  the  Bronze  Age,  brought  agriculture 
and  the  metallic  arts  into  Europe,  and  introduced  into  both 
Europe  and  India  the  plough,  a  word  formed  from  a  root  to 
be  traced  to  the  languages  of  the  brachycephalic  Slavs.* 
They  also  brought  to  Europe,  South-Western  Asia,  and 
India,  the  crops,  domestic  animals,  and  the  arts  and  handi- 
crafts which  had  originally  been  elaborated  in  Asia  Minor 
and  Phrygia,  and  it  was  these  people  who  were  afterwards 
succeeded  by  the  tribes  who  led  a  second  irruption  of  the  fairer 
races  from  the  North,  the  sons  of  the  bull,  the  people  of 
inflectional  speech,  wlio  called  themselves  the  Arya  or  noble 
people,  and  looked  down  upon  the  mechanical  races  wlio 
preceded  them,  and  who  originally  spoke  agglutinative 
languages. 

1  Dc  Quatrefages,   The  Human  Species^   Chap.  xxx.  *  Osteological  Char- 
acters, Cephalic  Index,'  p.    373.      Chap,  xxvii,  *The  Cro-Magnon  Race,* 

pp.  3^2,  333. 

2  Penka,  Origities  Ariaca,  Chap.  v.    Die  Enistchung  der  Arise/ten  Volker^ 
pp.  104,  105. 

3  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times ^  2nd  Edition,  p.  129. 

*  Penka,  Origincs  Ariacir^  Chap.  v.  p.  135.     Die  Entstehung  der  Arischen 
Volker, 


ESSAY  I.  83 

The  process  of  intermixture  is  fully  attested  by  the  lin- 
guistic changes  which  can  be  traced  in  the  Indo-European 
and  Ugro-Finnic  languages :  for  these,  as  Dr.  Sayce  says, 
show  that  the  three  stages  of  language :  the  monosyllabic  or 
isolating,  the  agglutinative,  and  the  inflectional,  ^  mark 
successive  levels  of  civilisation.'^  Each  of  these  forms  of 
speech  were,  according  to  Topinard's  doctrine,  the  result  of 
the  cerebral  organisation  of  the  race  who  used  it,^  and  the 
three  stages  marked  the  rule  of  the  men  of  monosyllabic  or 
non-grammatical  speech,  of  tlieir  Turanian  successors,  who 
spoke  agglutinative  tongues,  who  were  succeeded  by  the 
Aryans,  who  marked  grammatical  changes  of  meaning,  not 
by  the  copulation  of  roots,  but  by  changes  in  the  form  of 
the  root-word.  Clear  evidence  of  the  union  of  two  alien 
races,  the  one  speaking  inflectional,  and  the  other  aggluti- 
native languages,  is  shown  in  the  recurrence  in  the  same 
language  of  some  cases  of  nouns  and  tenses  of  verbs  formed 
by  the  inflectional  change  of  letters  and  alteration  of  the 
root,  which  Penka  has  shown  to  be  an  inlierent  characteristic 
of  the  language-system  of  the  northern  Aryans,^  and  of 
others,  like  the  Latin  ama-ho  and  ama-vi^  formed  by  the 
agglutination  of  two  separate  roots,  which  show  that  these 
originally  inflectional  tongues  had  been  altered  by  races 
whose  mother-speecli  had  belonged  to  the  agglutinative 
Turanian  and  Ugro-Finnic  families. 

But  this  evidence  of  intermixture  is  not  confined  to  gram- 
matical forms,  but  can  also  be  traced  in  the  intcrcliange 
of  letters.  Thus  Penka  shows  that  the  northern  Aryans 
originally  used  only  aspirated  tenues  A7*,  ph,  th^  and  that  the 
medial  g^  rf,  b  were  also  originally  Aryan  letters.*       The 

*  Sayce,  TAd  Principles  of  Comparative  Philology ^  chap.  iv.   *  The  Theory 
of  the  Three  Stages  of  Development  in  the  History  of  Language.* 

*  Penka,    Origincs  Ariaca^    chap.    vii.      Morphologischer  Charakter  dcr 
Arischen  Grundsprache^  p.  1 73,  note  I. 

*  Ibid,  pp.  199  flf. 

*  Ibid.    Pkonologischer  Charakter  der  Arischen  Gnindsprache,   pp.    161 

and  169,  note  2. 

3 


A 


34  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Finnic  languages  of  the  brachycephalic  races,  on  the  other 
hand,  possess  no  aspirates,  and,  as  Thomsen  says,  it  is  with 
the  greatest  difficulty  that  a  Finn  can  pronounce  the  media? 
gy  dy  b.^  Thus  when  we  find  in  the  analysis  of  Ugro-Finnic 
languages  that  the  Akkadian  uses  g*,  rf,  6,  where  their 
brethren,  who  have  retained  the  purer  Finnic  speech,  use 
ky  ty  py  B&  iii  thc  Akkadian  g^imy  and  the  Vogul  kuniy  mean- 
ing man,2  we  can  at  once  see  that  the  advent  of  the  Aryan 
race  of  northern  sun- worshippers,  who  used  the  medial  letters, 
was  an  important  factor  in  Akkadian  historical  develop- 
ment ;  and  again,  when  we  find  in  the  German  tongue  the 
Aryan  gh^  bhy  dhy  and  gy  rf,  i,  become  A:,  ty  /?,  we  find  that, 
as  Chavee  says, '  if  the  German  people  had  been  originally 
an  Aryan  race,  they  could  never  have  altered  the  Aryan 
language  as  they  have  done."**  That  this  alteration  of  a 
language  spoken  by  a  people  who,  like  the  northern  Aryans, 
based  their  national  organisation  on  individual  and  family 
property,  was  caused  by  changes  made  by  the  conquered  but 
more  numerous  communistic  Finnic  race,  is  proved  by  the 
existence  in  South  Germany  and  Switzerland  of  a  great 
preponderance  of  brachycephalic  or  round-headed  people,* 
showing  that  the  Finns  and  Lapps  were,  like  the  Dravidian 
populations  of  India,  conquered  by  a  Northern  race  using 
inflectional  forms  of  speech  and  aspirated  letters,  and 
that  the  descendants  of  the  united  conquering  and  con- 
quered races  subsequently  altered  these  letters  into  the 
hard  .tenues  of  the  original  tillers  of  the  soil,  just 
as  the  Indian  Dravidians  altered  both  the  hard  tenues 
and  ajspirated  gutturals  of  their  Northern  invaders  into 
sibilants. 

^  Penka,  Origines  Ariaca^  p.  1 66,  note  4.  Thomsen's  iiber  den  Eittflusz 
der  Germanischen  Sprachen  auf  die  Finnisch-Lappischen^  24. 

'  Lenonnant,  Chalda^an  Magic^  chap,  xxiii.  p.  315,  chap.  xxii.  p.  302, 

'  Penka,  Origities  Ariactr,  chap.  vi.  pp.  164,  165.  Chavee,  Bull.  <U  la 
Sociiti  d Anthropologic  de  Paris ,  2  Ser.  ix.  p.  621. 

*  Ihid.  chap.  v.  Entstehung der  Arischefi^Vblkcr^  pp.  101-103  ;  chap.  vi. 
p.  170. 


ESSAY  I.  35 

• 

The   route  by  which    the   brachycephaiic   races  entered 
£urope  is  shown  by  the  prevalence  of  the  brachycephaiic 
type  of  skull  among  the  Slavs  and  Roumanians,^  and  their 
wide  diffusion  is  proved  by  the  predominance  of  tlie  brachy- 
cephaiic type  of  round  graves  throughout  the  Bronze  Age  in 
Europe,  and  by  the   legends   universally  prevalent  which 
connect  the  knowledge  of  metals  with  a  race  of  dwarfs  who 
became  the  elves  of  the  popular  fairy  tales.     We  can  every- 
where find,  in  the  interchange  of  letters,  proofs  similar  to 
those  I  have  adduced  from  other  sources,  that  a  dolicho- 
cephalic race  of  hunters,  belonging  to  the  types  represented 
by  the  Esquimaux  in  the  extreme  North,  and  the  Australians, 
Hottentots,  and  Bosjesmans  in  the  South,*  were  superseded 
by  dolichocephalic,  mesocephalic,  and  brachycephaiic  races 
of  farmers,  gardeners,  and  artisans,  and  that  these  mixed 
races  were  again  conquered  by  a  Northern  race,  who  spoke 
an  inflectional  form   of  speech,  but  whose   language  was 
altered  by  the  influence  of  the  more  numerous  Southern 
stock  whom  they  subdued.     Thus  these  racial  influences  are 
apparent  in  the  changes  of  the  Aryan  word  ghard^  the  heart. 
This  becomes  in  Greece  and  Italy,  where  the  influence  of 
the  Permian  Finns  of  Central  Europe,  whose  national  letters 
were   the  tenues  Jt,  ^,  /?,   predominated,  Kapiia   and   cor^ 
cordis.     The  gh  of  the  root  again  becomes  h  in  Gothic  and 
Sanskrit,  as  in  Gothic  hairt-o  and  Skr.  hrid^  and  the  Finnic 
rule  that  a  consonant  should  always  be  followeil  by  a  breath- 
ing, appears  in  the  vowel  after  A,  while  the  Finnic  t  supersedes 
the  original  d  in  halrt-o.     This  Finnic  rule  that  a  breath- 
ing, parasitic  i  or  J,  or  a  vowel,  should  always  follow  a  con- 
sonant, appears  also  in  the  changes  of  the  Aryan  ground - 
form  kantam,  a  hundred,  which  becomes  in  the  Lapp  tjnoti\ 
aiotte,  in  which  the  n  is  dropped  as  a  following  consonant, 
the  Tcheremissian,   sjtulo^   the   Lat.    centum^   the   English 

*  Penka,  Origims  Ariaca^  chap.  v.  p.  loi. 

*  De  Quatreiages.     The  Human  Species^  chap.  xxx.   *  Osteological  Char- 
acters, Cephalic  Index,'  p.  373. 


36  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

hundred.^  Hence  we  learn  that  the  word  shata,  the  Sans- 
krit  and  Zend  form  of  kantam^  is  one  made  by  a  Northern 
stock  united  with  a  composite  race  born  from  the  union  of 
Southern  Dravidians,  who  altered  the  Northern  roots  by 
turning  gutturals  into  sibilants,  with  North-eastern  Finns, 
who  changed  them  still  further  by  eliding  one  of  two  con- 
joined consonants.  To  return  again  to  tlie  changes  of  the 
root  ghard.  We  see  that  the  h  of  the  Sanskrit  hrid  was 
originally  an  aspirated  guttural,  by  the  Sanskrit  word  srad 
dadhamiy  I  believe,  which  is  shown  by  the  Latin  credo  for 
cor-doy  to  mean,  I  give  to  heart.  In  this  Sanskrit  word  we  see 
further  proof  that  the  originally  Northern  guttural  becomes 
among  a  people  with  Southern  affinities  a  sibilant,  and  this 
appears  not  only  in  the  Sanskrit  srad^  but  also  in  the  Lithu- 
anian szudisy'^  and  we  thus  see  that  the  Lithuanian  races,  whose 
ritual  is  founded  on  tree  and  sun  worship,  were  formed  by  the 
union  of  the  Southern  agricultural  races  of  the  Indian  village 
with  the  Northern  sun-worshippers.  Similar  changes  and 
similar  historical  information  mark  the  use  of  the  old  Aryan 
root  akh-vaSy  a  horse.  This  becomes  in  the  Latin  equus^  in 
Sanskrit  ash-va,  and  in  Zend,  while  the  Sanskrit  ash  is  re- 
tained, the  V  becomes  /?,  and  the  name  ash-pa  becomes  that 
adopted  by  a  mixed  race  of  Southern  Indian  villagers  and 
Turanian  Finns,  l^he  Southern  sibilant  again  appears  in 
the  Lithuanian  asz-va.  We  can  here  trace  the  historical 
transition  of  the  speech  of  the  Nortlicm  races  allied  to  the 
horse-eating,  long-headed  men  of  the  Palaeolithic  Age, 
through,  on  the  one  hand,  the  Ugro-Finn  Voguls,  who  still 
sacrifice  horses,  to  the  races  who,  like  the  Lithuanian,  Zend, 
and  Sanskrit-speaking  peoples,  changed  the  guttural  Minto 
a  sibilant;  and,  on  the  other,  to  the  Latin  races  who,  like 

^  Penka,  Origines  Ariaca,  chap.  v.  Enistehung  der  Arischen  Vblkery 
pp.  141,  151. 

'  Ibid.^  chap.  v.  EntsUhung  der  Arischen  Vblker^  p.  140.  Sayce, 
Introduction  to  Science  of  Lcmguage,  chap.  vi.  *  Roots,*  vol.  ii.  pp.  12,  20; 
chap.  vii.  *  The  Inflectional  Families  of  Speech,*  p.  125. 


ESSAY  I.  37 

tlie  Permian  Finns,  changed  the  guttural  kh  into  the  tenuis 
k.  Again  the  root-word  khund,  dog,  becomes  in  Greek  kvcov, 
/cvi/099  in  Latin  canis^  in  Lithuanian  szuns^  Sanskrit  shvan,^ 
Other  instances  are  those  shown  in  the  change  of  the  root- 
word  mathar  (our  mother)  into  the  Greek  firjrrjp^  and  the 
Latin  mater ;  of  the  original  ocht^  eight,  into  the  Greek  o/cto), 
the  Latin  octo^  the  Sanskrit  ash-ta  ;  of  the  Aryan  d  into  the 
sibilant  2  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  duo^  Lithuanian  J?/,  the 
German  zwei. 

But  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  instructive  historical 
changes  is  that  shown  in  the  different  forms  of  the  root-word 
of  our  English  Jire.  This  appears  in  the  Armenian  Pkur^ 
beginning  with  an  Aryan  aspirated  p.  This  becomes  in 
Greek  ttv/o,  Umbrian  jwr,  Oscan  /w/r,  Old  Higli  German 
Fiur.  Greek  tradition  referred  the  derivation  of  the  word 
TTuf),  which  we  see  passed  into  the  Umbrian  and  Oscan  of 
Italy,  to  Phrygian  sources,  and  the  same  root  appears  again 
in  the  name  of  Phrygia,  which  is  shown  by  the  Greek  ^Xe^to^ 
to  bum,  and  the  Sanskrit  Bhri-gu^  the  name  of  the  inventors 
of  fire,  to  be  a  form  of  the  old  Aryan  root  Pkur  or  Bhur. 
This  root,  which  appears  in  the  Sanskrit  Bhar-ga  and 
Bhar-dta^  when  it  was  adopted  by  the  race  who  brought  to 
Asia  Minor  with  the  Dravidian  name  /rfa,  the  Tamil  suffix 
gu^  which  makes  verbal  nouns  from  roots,  became  Bhru-gu^ 
the  Thracian .  Bru-gcs^  and  Phru-gu  the  Phrygians,  the 
humers  or  sons  of  fire,  the  original  Phur  or  Bhur  being, 
when  formed  into  a  verbal  noun  by  the  addition  of  the  suffix 
gu^  changed  into  Phru  or  Bhru.  The  change  from  ph  and 
bhr  to  p  in  the  Greek,  Umbrian,  and  Oscan,  shows  that  it  was 
made  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  the  Finnic  languages, 
which  forbid  the  union  of  two  consonants,  and  do  not  allow 
any  Finnisli  word  to  begin  with  more  than  one  consonant.^ 
Thus,  when  this  fire-god  Bhur  or  Phur  became  a  national 

*  Penka,  Origems  An'acer,  chap.  v.    Entstehungdcr  Arischcn  Vblker^  p.  139 
2  Ibid,  chap.  vi.      Phonologischcr  Charakter  dcr  Arischcn  GrundspracAe, 
p.  167,  note  2. 


38  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Finnic  god,  his  name  was  changed  to  Piru,  the  god  who 
in  the  Finnic  story  of  the  Birth  of  the  Snake,  is  the  god 
who  gives  it  eyes.^  This  god  became  the  Father  God  of 
the  Zend  tribe  of  the  Fryano  or  Phryano,  tlie  worshippers 
of  the  god  (an)  Fry,  Phry,  or  Phru,  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay 
III.,  were  the  Hindu  Viru-paksha,  or  race  who  worshipped 
the  Linga  called  '  Viru '  or  Piru,  the  p  being  the  equivalent 
of  the  Indian  v,  just  as  that  of  the  Zend  Ash-pa  is  the  equi- 
valent of  the  Sanskrit  Ash-va,  The  form  Piru  used  by  the 
Finnic  race,  who  turned  aspirates  into  tenues,  is  reproduced 
in  pSrum  apdnij  the  Vedic  epithet  of  the  creating  god, 
meaning  the  sweller  or  begetter  of  the  waters,*  the  lightning 
flash  which  gives  creative  power  to  the  heavenly  Soma.  It 
also  appears  in  the  Tamil  root  peru^  meaning  to  beget  or 
bring  forth,  which  is  reproduced  in  the  Latin  pario^  with 
the  same  meaning,  while  per  or  perUy  the  begetter,  pro- 
duces the  Latin  vir,  a  man. 

But  this  history  of  the  fire-god,  the  great  begetter  and 
producer,  who,  starting  from  the  North-west  of  Europe,  gave 
his  name  to  Phrygia,  and  produced  the  Indian,  Finnic,  Zend, 
and  Latin  off^shoots  I  have  noted,  does  not  end  here,  for  the 
Finnic  Pir  becomes  in  Akkadian,  which  substitutes  mediae  for 
tenues,  and  changes  a  proto-medic  r  into  Z,^  Bil,  Pil,  or  Bel. 
Bil-gi  is  the  fire-god  of  Akkadian  mythology,  the  god  who 
in  the  Akkadian  story  of  the  Flood,  is  superseded  by  his  own 
son,  as  Vyansa  was  by  Indra,  who  was  the  son  of  the  mother- 
waters,  begotten  by  the  lightning  flash,  and  this  Bil-gi 
becomes  the  primaeval  Bel  of  Nipur,  whose  wife  was  Bil-at,  a 
prototype  of  Allat.*  We  thus  find  in  the  Akkadian  fire-god 
the  same  god  who,  as  the  Greek  Phlegyas,  appears  as  the 
king  of  the  Heraclidae,  or  sons  of  the  fire  and  sun-god,  on 
their  first  entering  into,  and  conquest  of  Greece  from  the 

^  Abercromby,  Magic  Songs  of  the  Finns  Folklore^  vol.  i.  p.  38. 

2  Rigveda,  x.  36,  8. 

^  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic ^  chap,  xxiii.  p.  316. 

•*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1 887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  149. 


ESSAY  I.  39 

cultivating  tribes  of  the  communal  village  races.  For 
Phlegyas  was,  like  Bil-gi,  deposed,  that  is,  slain,  with  his 
subjects,  the  Cyclopes,  by  Apollo,  the  storm-god,  of  the 
iEolic  races.  Also,  as  we  find  the  northern  r  altered  into  I 
in  the  Akkadian  Bil-gi^  we  find  a  similar  change  in  the 
name  Phlegyas^  the  Greek  form  of  Phre-gu-as^  and  we  thus 
see  that  the  German  pjlug  and  our  plough  are  names  taken 
from  that  of  the  Phrygian  fire  father-god  by  a  race  which, 
besides  changing  the  r  into  an  /,  clianged  the  ph  into  a  J3. 
This  metaphor  of  the  plough,  the  phru-gu^  jyflu-gu^  pfl^^g'i 
plug^  as  the  fire-drill  which  creates  life-giving  heat  in  the 
furrow  by  friction  seems  to  have  been  taken  from  the  Turanian 
race;  for,  just  as  the  Gonds  of  India  worshipped  the  god  who 
sends  the  life-giving  rain,  the  cloud  impregnated  by  light- 
ning, under  the  name  of  the  Great  Naga,  the  heavenly  nagur 
or  plough,  so  did  the  early-cultivating  Finns,  who  brought 
the  plough  and  plough -grown  crops  from  Phrygia,  call  the 
plough  by  the  name  of  the  fire-god,  and  look  on  it  as  im- 
pregnating the  earth  with  life,  just  as  the  lightning  gave 
vital  and  creative  power  to  the  heaven-sent  rain.  These 
people,  whose  ancestors,  we  are  told  in  the  myth  of 
Europa,  came  from  Phoenicia,  the  land  of  the  red  (<f)oivL^) 
under  the  guidance  of  the  cow,  brought  with  them  into 
Europe  the  traditions  of  law  and  order  preserved  in  the 
names  of  Europa'^s  sons,  Minos,  the  measurer,  from  Men, 
to  measure,  Rhadamanthus,  the  diviner  {mantha)  by  the  rod 
{rhodon\  the  judge,  and  Sarpedon,  the  cleanser,  from  sair, 
mr,  to  sweep.  They  also,  under  the  guidance  of  Apollo,  the 
storm-god  bom  on  the  Xanthus,  introduced  the  worship 
of  the  ^Eolian  Apollo,  tlie  Apollo  Lycaeus,  the  offspring  of 
the  wolf  (hikos)  fire-god,  tlie  god  of  the  fertilising  storm 
and  tempest,  whose  worsliip  superseded  that  of  the  Cyclo- 
pean fire-god  Phlegyas,  just  as  the  worship  of  the  rain-gods, 
Sak-ra,  Indra,  la  or  Yah,  and  Hor,  superseded  that  of  the 
fire-gods  Viru,  Piru,  Bil-gi,  and  Shu,  in  India,  Assyria,  and 
Egypt. 


40  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

We  thus  see  from  the  instances  cited  in  this  Essay,  which 
might  be  greatly  multiplied,  that  language  and  mythic  tales 
give  most  valuable  historical  evidence,  not  only,  as  has  been 
apparently  thought  by  many  writers,  of  the  internal  growth 
of  races  of  homogeneous  descent,  but  also  of  the  union,  alli- 
ances, and  common  evolution  of  thought  of  alien  and  hetero- 
geneous people.  For,  as  in  geological  strata  the  fossils  and 
the  order  of  superposition  tell  us  of  the  ancient  climates 
and  the  order  of  succession  of  the  living  races  inhabiting  the 
globe,  so  in  language  and  myths  we  find  proof  of  the  forma- 
tion of  successive  strata  of  human  thought,  each  of  which 
can  be  placed  in  chronological  order,  by  noting  the  evidence 
furnished  by  the  fossil  remains  wliich  mark  linguistic  and 
mythic  changes.  This  knowledge,  with  that  gained  from  the 
study  of  the  growth  of  ritual  and  the  other  methods  of 
investigation  which  I  have  indicated  in  these  Essays,  enables 
us  to  look  at  the  diversified  modes  of  experience  and  thought 
revealed  by  antiquarian  research  and  the  record  of  existing 
traditions,  beliefs,  superstitions,  and  national  customs,  not  as 
an  apparently  hopeless  puzzle,  but  to  trace  in  them  the 
various  stages  reached  by  man  in  his  progress  towards  reduc- 
ing the  limits  of  the  unknowable  and  unknown,  and  to  see 
that  customs  and  beliefs,  which  appear  at  first  sight  useless 
and  foolish,  really  furnish  proofs  of  the  wisdom  and  ingenuity 
of  our  forefatliers.  For  they  tell  us  how,  before  they  had 
obtained  the  assistance  since  given  by  the  discoveries  of 
numerous  generations  of  inventors  and  thinkers,  they  un- 
ravelled many  hidden  mysteries  of  nature  and  overcame  the 
difficulties  which  threatened  to  foil  their  efforts  to  transmit 
to  future  generations  the  benefit  of  their  experiences. 


ESSAY  II 

THE    PRIMITIVE    VILLAGE,    ITS    ORIGIN,   GROWTH    INTO    THE 
PROVINCE,    THE    CITY,    AND    THE    STATE,    AND    ITS 

METHODS   OF    RECORD 

Every  one  will  admit  that  the  primitive  village  must 
have  been  the  parent  of  the  oldest  form  of  the  later  city 
which  is  invariably  built  round  a  centre,  the  site  of  the 
original  market-place  and  temple,  the  Capitol  of  Rome  and 
the  Acropolis  of  Greece.  In  seeking  for  the  centre  round 
which  the  village  was  built  we  find  indubitable  evidence 
as  to  the  country  whence  it  originated.  For  it  is  in  India 
that  we  find  the  village  of  the  aboriginal  tribes  invariably 
arranged  so  that  the  Sarna,  the  sacred  grove  in  which  the 
trees  of  the  primaeval  forests  are  still  left  standing,  as  the 
home  of  the  local  gods,  is  the  central  point  of  the  village.  It 
is  here  that  we  find  the  explanation  of  the  reverence  for  the 
tree,  the  parent-tree  of  life  of  all  the  early  races  of  India,  of 
the  Northern  Finns,  the  sons  of  the  pine-tree ;  and  of  the 
Babylonians,  the  sons  of  the  palm-tree,  and  of  so  many  other 
races.  It  is  the  Sarna  which  also  explains  the  sanctity  of  the 
groves  attached  to  the  temples,  and  dedicated  to  the  local 
gods  of  all  countries  of  South-western  Asia  and  Southern 
Europe,  and  it  is  among  the  customs  of  the  Indian  people, 
who  call  themselves  the  sons  of  the  tree,  that  we  must 
look  for  those  of  the  first  founders  of  village  life.  But  in 
doing  this  we  have  to  fix  our  initial  starting-point  in  a  very 
early  age  of  human  history,  for  we  find  everywhere  through- 
out Europe,  west   of   Greece,   remains  of   villages   of  the 

41 


i 


42  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Neolithic  Age,  which  conclusively  prove  that  the  people 
living  in  them  had  reached  a  fairly  advanced  stage  of 
civilisation,  as  they  grew  cereals,  millets,  and  flax,  owned 
cattle,  sheep,  and  goats,  and  cultivated  fruit-trees ;  and  as 
there  is  no  evidence  whatever  in  the  history  of  European 
village  communities  of  any  sudden  break  denoting  a  change 
in  organisation,  it  must  be  assumed  that  these  villages 
were  all  founded  on  the  same  system  of  communistic 
property  in  land,  wliich  is  still  the  distinguishing  form  of 
land-tenure  in  all  countries  of  Asia,  and  in  all  those  of 
Europe  south  of  the  Lippe,  and  east  of  Westphalia,  and 
we  must  therefore  believe  that  the  dwellers  in  the  pile- 
villages  in  Switzerland  and  North  Italy  held  their  land  on 
tenures  similar  to  those  we  find  in  the  pile-villages  of 
the  Naga  and  river  races  in  Assam  and  Burma.  Also  as, 
wherever  we  find  these  communistic  villages,  we  find  the 
village  religion  based  on  tree- worship,  the  first  villages 
must  have  been  organised  by  a  people  to  whom  trees  were 
the  home  of  the  gods.  The  original  system  on  which  these 
villages  are  founded  must  therefore  have  been  elaborated 
by  a  forest  people,  and  could  not  therefore  have  originated 
in  those  countries  which  were  the  seat  of  the  best-known 
ancient  ruling  empires,  Assyria  and  Egypt,  for  in  these 
treeless  and  rainless  lands  no  forest  races  could  ever  have 
founded  the  network  of  confederated  villages  which  was  to 
grow  into  the  later  empire ;  and  the  rule  of  these  countries 
must  necessarily  mark  a  later  stage  in  human  progress,  for 
they  owed  their  prosperity  to  maritime  trade,  and  acknow- 
ledged this  and  the  foreign  origin  of  their  supreme  gods  by 
carrying  them  in  ships  called  arks  in  all  religious  processions. 
It  is  also  perfectly  impossible  that  the  Indian  forest  abori- 
gines could  have  learned  how  to  organise  their  villages  from 
the  forest  and  hunting  races  of  Europe  and  Asia  Minor,  for, 
till  the  capacities  of  India  as  a  wealth-producing  country 
had  been  developed  by  its  own  agriculturists,  there  was 
nothing  to  tempt  the  Northern  races  to  leave  their  own 


ESSAY  II  43 

lands  and  cross  the  mountains  and  deserts  which  intervened 
between  them  and  India.  It  is  also  equally  impossible  that 
the  exact  identity  between  tlie  village  communities  of  India 
and  Europe  could  ever  have  existed  unless  they  had  a 
common  origin.  It  therefore  follows  that  agriculture  was 
first  systematically  practised  on  a  large  scale  in  the  forest 
lands  of  Southern  India,  and  that  it  was  emigrants  from 
thence  who  carried  the  rules  of  the  village  communities 
with  them  as  they  progressed  northward.  That  the  govern- 
ment of  the  original  communistic  village  was  greatly  altered 
by  contact  with  other  emigrant  tribes,  I  shall  show  con- 
clusively, in  the  course  of  this  Essay,  but  the  earliest  villages 
were  those  founded  by  the  Dravidian  races,  the  dolicho- 
cephalic Australioids,  who  called  themselves  the  sons  of 
the  tree,  and  are  now  represented  by  the  Marya,  or  tree 
(tnarom)  Gonds,  and  their  Indian  cognates,  some  of  whom, 
like  the  Southern  races  of  Australia,  still  use  the  'boomerang/ 
These  people  made  the  village,  and  not  the  family,  their 
national  unit,  and  made  it  a  rule,  as  I  show  in  the  next 
Essay,  that  the  mothers  and  fathers  of  children  born  in  their 
villages  should  never  belong  to  the  same  village,  and  that 
the  children  should  be  brought  up  by  their  mothers  and 
maternal  uncles  without  the  intervention  of  the  father,  and 
should  be  regarded  as  the  children  of  the  village  and  State 
in  which  they  were  bom.  Thus  each  village  was  ruled  by 
the  mothers  and  maternal  uncles  of  the  children  born  in  it, 
and  it  was  this  system  of  government  which  they  took  with 
them  into  Europe,  where  tliey  became  the  Amazonian  races 
of  Asia  Minor  and  Greece.  It  was  these  matriarchal  tribes 
who  were  the  ancestors  on  the  mother^s  side  of  the  dolicho- 
cephalic Basques,  and  the  cognate  melanchroia,  or  dark- 
skinned  races,  who  were  the  agriculturists  of  the  Neolithic 
Age.  It  is  impossible  now  to  determine  accurately  whether 
the  original  founders  of  the  first  Indian  villages  were  a 
homogeneous  race  or  not,  for  the  unity  of  race  was  very 
little    regarded   in   ancient   days.       Almost   all   the    lower 


44  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

• 

castes  in  Bengal,  such  as  the  Bagdis,  Bauris,  Dosadhs, 
Chandels,  Eoras,  the  Chasas,  or  cultivators  of  Orissa,  and 
the  Eahars,  are  ready  to  admit  any  one  of  higher  social 
standing  than  themselves  into  the  caste,  provided  he  com- 
plies with  the  customs  of  the  tribe,^  while  the  well-known 
custom  of  turning  into  full-blooded  Kshatryas  low-caste 
but  wealthy  husbands,  who  are  ready  to  pay  large  sums 
to  impecunious  Rajputs  for  their  daughters,  shows  that 
the  idea  of  purity  of  blood  is  of  foreign  origin  in  India,  and 
that  it  has  never  obtained  a  permanent  place  among  the 
institutions  of  the  land.  But  in  spite  of  the  uncertainty  as 
to  race,  it  seems. probable  that  the  first  tribes  who  laid  the 
foundations  of  organised  society  were  at  least  a  community 
who  had  by  long  inter-association  developed  a  distinct  type 
of  humanity ;  and  the  most  distinctive  mark  of  this  lower 
type  seems  to  lie  in  the  nasal  index,  for  in  summing  up  tiie 
results  of  the  exhaustive  inquiry  into  the  anthropometry, 
customs,  and  institutions  of  the  castes  and  tribes  of  Bengal 
made  by  him  under  the  orders  of  the  Government,  Mr. 
Risley  says  : — *  If  we  take  a  series  of  castes  in  Bengal,  Bchar, 
and  the  North-western  Provinces,  and  arrange  them  in  the 
order  of  the  average  nasal  index,  so  that  the  caste  with  the 
finest  noses  be  at  the  top,  and  that  with  the  coarsest  be  at 
the  bottom  of  the  list,  it  will  be  found  that  this  order 
substantially  corresponds  witli  the  accepted  order  of  social 
precedence,'  and  the  casteless  tribes — Kols,  Korwas.  Mundas, 
and  the  like,  are  at  the  bottom  of  the  list,  and  the  trading 
Khatrfs  and  land-holdtng  Babhans  at  the  top.*  But  in 
spite  of  this  present  precedence  of  the  highest  castes  I  shall 
show,  when  I  examine  the  religious  and  matrimonial  customs 
of  both  Brahmins  and  Babhans  in  the  next  Essay,  that  they 
all  go  back  to  the  matriarchal  stage  of  society  organised  by 
the  Dravidians  at  the  bottom  of  the  list.     Among  these  the 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  pp.  40,  80,  186,  192,  251, 
370,  568. 

^  Ibid.  vol.  i.  Preface,  pp.  33,  34. 


ESSAY  II  45 

most  characteristic  tribes  are  theMarya  ortree-Gonds  of  the 
Central  Provinces,  and  those  distinguished  by  Mr.  Risley  as 
peculiar  types — the  Mdl  Paharias  of  the  Rajmehal  hills  and 
the  Mundas  and  Ooraons  of  the  Chota  Nagpore  plateau  ; 
and   of  these,  while  the  Mundas  are,   as  I  shall  prove,  a 
mixed  race  formed  by  the  fusion  of  the  mountaineers  of  the 
North-east  with  the  Gond  sons  of  the  tree,  together  with 
the  admixture    of  later  elements,   the  Mdl  Paharias  and 
Ooraons  show,  as  I  shall  prove  presently  in  this  Essay  and 
in    Essay  in.,   strong    traces   of  Northern  origin.     But  in 
spite  of  the    fact   that  their  ancestors   on    one  side  were 
immigrants   into  India,  what    the  Mundas  most   strongly 
insist  upon  is,  that  it  is  their  original  fatherland,  and  they 
must  therefore  be  a  race  who  exercised  a  most  important 
influence  in  the  early  development  of  its  national  history. 
The  form  of  the    heads    of  these  primitive  Dravidians  is 
'  usually  dolichocephalic,  but  the  nose  is  thicker  and  broader 
than  that  of  any  other  races  except  the  negro,  the  facial 
angle   is   comparatively  low,  the   lips   are  thick,   the   face 
wide  and   fleshy,   the    features   coarse   and    irregular ;  the 
average  stature  ranges  from  156*2  to  162*1  centimetres ;  the 
figure  is  squat  and  the  limbs  sturdy,  the  <:olour  of  the  skin 
varies  from  very  dark  brown  to  a  shade  closely  approaching 
black."*  ^      But  when  we  pass  from  anthropometrical  data  to 
those  given  by  national  character,  we  find  a  most  striking 
difiference  between  the  gregarious,  excitable,and  light-hearted, 
but  exceedingly  sensitive  Mundas,  and  the  silent,  self-con- 
tained, and  indomitably  obstinate  Turano-Dravidian  Bhuyas 
and  Gonds.      It  is  to  the  first  of  these  people  and   their 
maternal  ancestors,  the  Dravidian  sons  of  the  tree,  that  we 
must  look  for  the  origin  of  the  Indian  village,  which  the 
Mundas  claim  as  their  ancestral  heritage,  as  is  shown  by  the 
following  definition  of  their  rights  given  by  a  Munda  before 
Babu  Rakhal  Dass  Huldar,  the  commissioner  appointed  by 
Government  to  inquire  into  land-tenures  in  Chota  Nagpore. 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  i.  Preface,  p.  32. 


46  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

'  We  claim  bhunhiari  rights  (that  is,  the  rights  of  the 
original  settlers  who  first  cleared  and  cultivated  the  land), 
because  Chota  Nagpore  is  our  fatherland.  The  bones 
of  our  ancestors  lie  buried  in  Chota  Nagpore,  we  are 
no  colonists  from  other  countries,  but  derive  our  race  from 
Nagpore.  There  exist  in  Sutiamba  the  ruins  of  our  Munda 
fort,  half  a  pao  east  of  Pethoria ""  (in  the  north  of  the  Lohar- 
dugga  district).  '  We  allowed  the  Ooraons  of  Ruhidas  ^  to 
come  into  the  country.  They  came  peaceably,  and  we 
allowed  them  to  occupy  it  in  peace.  I  cannot  say  how 
or  when  the  Hindus  came.'*^  But  these  same  Mundas,  who 
called  the  Damooda,  the  great  river  of  Chota  Nagpore, 
Da-Munda,  the  water  (da)  of  the  Mundas,  are,  as  judged  by 
the  test  of  language  and  social  institutions,  of  the  same 
races  as  the  Kasia  on  the  Brahmaputra  in  Assam,  the 
Palang  and  Mon  or  Peguans  on  the  Irawaddy,  the  Kambojas 
on  the  Mekong,  and  the  Assamese  on  the  Tonquin,  in  Burma, 
Siam,  and  Cochin  China.^  Also  their  village  system  is 
identical  with  that  of  the  Malay  Lampoongs  of  Sumatra. 
These  people,  in  short,  belong  to  the  great  Malay  race  which 
includes  the  ruling  tribes  in  South-eastern  Asia  and  the 
Malay  Archipelago.  But  these  Mons  or  Mais,  who  claim  to 
be  aborigines  in  all  these  countries,  show  by  their  names 
that  they  were  originally  a  mountain  people,  for  Munda 
and  Kol  are  both  derived  from  the  roots  Afoji  and  Ko^ 
which  mean  a  mountain.  They  must  have  begun  their 
national  existence  as  a  race  of  hunters,  living,  as  some  of  the 

^  Ruhidas  is  ihe  land  of  the  red  men,  see  Essay  ii.  p.  91. 

-  I  have  copied  this  speech  from  ihe  official  report  of  Babu  Rakhal  Dass 
Huldar,  who  was  appointed  Tenure  Commissioner  in  1869. 

^  Dr.  Mason  (Mason's  BurmaA,  pp.  130-134)  shows  that  the  Mon  language 
has  an  indubitable  affinity  with  the  Munda  tongue  of  Chota  Nagpore  for 
*  the  first  six  numerals,  the  present  pronouns,  the  words  for  several  members 
of  the  body,  and  many  objects  of  nature  have  unquestionably  the  same 
origin.*  See  the  whole  subject  thus  discussed  in  Fytche's  Bnrmak,  Past  and 
Present f  vol.  i.  pp.  324-326;  also  Daltcm's  Ethnology  of  Bengal^  p.  151, 
whence  the  comparison  of  the  races  I  have  named  is  taken. 


ESSAY  II  47 

Indian  forest  tribes  now  do  almost,  exclusively  on  jungle- 
roots,  berries,  and  such  wild  animals  as  they  could  kill  with 
the  stone  weapons,  of  which  many  specimens  have  been  found 
in  Central  India  and  Madras,  for  they  are  all  keen  sports- 
men. It  is  they  who  are  the  cave-men  of  India,  who,  like 
the  similar  race  in  Europe,  have  left  in  the  caves  of  Central 
India  pictures  of  their  hunting  scenes.  They  sought  out 
for  their  tribal  head-quarters  the  regions  of  soft  sandstone 
and  limestone  rocks,  where  caves  are  naturally  formed  by 
infiltrating  water.  One  of  the  principal  of  these  natural 
nursing-grounds  was  doubtless  that  now  occupied  by  the 
Korwas,  the  coal-bearing  strata  of  Rewa,  Korea,  Sirgoojya 
and  the  southern  hills  of  Mirzapur,  which  last  are  formed  of 
Vindhyan  rocks.  It  is  through  this  country  that  the  Sone 
and  its  western  tributaries  flow,  and  here  in  Sirgoojya  is  tlie 
headquarters  of  the  Korwas,  the  primitive  forest  Kols,  wlio 
still,  like  their  forefathers,  live  principally  by  hunting,  though 
they  also  grow  some  crops,  the  most  important  of  which  are 
the  improved  grasses  called  murwa,  the  prolific  ragffi  of 
Madras,  and  a  similar  crop  called  ffutidli.  It  was  in  the 
lower  valleys  of  these  mountains  tliat  they  came  in  contact 
with  the  Dravidian  sons  of  the  tree  living  in  the  Chuttisghur 
plateau,  where,  as  in  Southern  Madras,  they  had  found  and 
cultivated  the  wild  rice,  the  first  shoots  of  wliich,  when 
they  sprout  at  the  beginning  of  the  rains,  are  still  reverently 
gathered  in  Chuttisgurh  and  Central  India,  and  hung  up  in 
every  house  at  the  festival  of  Gurh-puja,  held  in  August,  at 
the  same  time  as  the  Sravana,  or  snake  and  barley  festival  of 
the  Hindus  and  Ooraons,  described  in  Essay  in.  It  was  these 
rice-growers  who  formed  the  first  permanent  village.  They 
are  the  Pitarali  Somavantah,  tlie  Fathers  possessed  of  Soma 
or  the  generating  power  (Su)  whence  all  life  is  born.  They 
are  the  oldest  race  of  Fathers,  to  whom  rice  is  offered  at  the 
annual  festival  of  the  Pitri-Yajiia,  or  sacrifice  to  the 
Fathers.  They  were  the  ancestors  of  the  ruling  races  of 
the  land,  called  originally  Bharata-varsha,  the  land  of  the 


d 


48  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Bliaratas,  the  begetting  and  conceiving  (bhri)  race,  before  it 
got  the  name  of  Sindhava  or  land  of  the  Moon  {Sin\  whence 
India  is  derived.  It  was  these  stone-men  of  the  North-east 
who  were  the  first  clearers  of  the  sal-forests  of  the  North- 
east country,  who  made  the  sal-tree  (Shorea  robusta)  their 
mother-tree,  and  who  used  in  their  clearances  the  peculiar 
form  of  shouldered  celt  common  to  India  and  Burma.  It 
was  with  these  that  they  stripped  off,  as  their  successors  do 
now,  the  bark  of  the  trees  grown  on  the  banks  of  the  smaller 
rivulets  they  selected  as  the  sites  of  their  rice-fields,  and 
burned  the  trees  afterwards.  These  processes  of  early  cultiva- 
vation  are  described  in  the  national  Gond  Epic,  called  the 
Song  GfLhigal,  This  tells  how  the  four  Father  Gonds,the 
sons  of  the  squirrel,  left  the  mountain  Dhawalagiri,  a  general 
name  for  the  Himalayan  range,  where  they  were  bom,  and 
came  to  Central  India,  and  how  they  were  found  in  the 
forests  by  Lingal,  the  God  of  the  Linga,  who  was  born  of  a 
flower,  and  fed  on  honey  from  the  Banyan,  or  Bur  tree  {Ficus 
Indica\  which  afterwards,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  became  the 
mother-tree  of  the  Bliurs  or  Bharatas.  He  taught  them  how 
to  form  fields  by  cutting  down  the  Anjun-trees  (Hardwtchia 
hi7iata)^one  of  the  hardest  trees  known,  which  line  the  forest 
brooks  of  Central  India.  They  could  not,  as  they  used  to  do 
in  the  drier  air  of  the  mountains,  make  fire  from  flint  to  bum 
the  trees  and  clear  the  ground  for  the  rice  crop  in  these 
damp  and  rainy  forests  ;  so  Lingal  sent  the  youngest  of  the 
four  brothers,  the  fire-god,  to  the  village  of  the  giant  Rikad 
Gowadi,  the  squirrel  (rikkhi)  or  tree  (rukh)  father  of  the 
Kolarian  village,  called  by  the  Mundas  Gowa.  Rikad  was 
watching  his  crops  at  night  by  a  great  fire  of  logs  to  guard 
them  from  the  deer,  j  ust  as  the  Kol  dwellers  in  the  forest  do 
now,  and  the  young  fire-god  of  the  new  race  tried  to  steal  a 
burning  log,  but  a  spark  fell  on  Rikad'^s  face  and  woke  him. 
He  pursued  the  young  Gond,  wanting  to  eat  him,  but  the 
latter  dropped  the  log  and  escaped.  The  new-comers  did 
not  ally  themselves  with  the  aboriginal  matriarchal  races  till 


ESSAY  II  49 

Lingal  went  himself  and  made  friends  of  Rikad  and  his  wife 
bv  playing  to  them  on  the  musical  bow  he  had  made,  as  the 
Koles  do  now,  by  fixing  a  bottle  gourd  as  a  sounding-board 
on  the  string  of  a  tightly-strung  bow.  It  was  after  this  that 
the  seven  daughters  of  Rikad  Gowadi  went  with  Lingal,  as 
the  Kol  girls  of  the  Kol  villages  do  still,  to  meet  the  four 
Gronds  or  Mundas,  dance  with  tliem  and  become  their  wives. 
It  was  the  union  between  the  patriarchal  and  matriarchal 
races  which  resulted  in  the  worship  of  the  eleven  gods.  The 
four  Gond  fathers  and  the  seven  matriarchal  mothers  were, 
as  I  show  in  Essays  iii.  and  iv.,  the  four  seasons  of  the  year, 
and  the  seven  days  of  the  week,  tlie  eleven  gods  of  genera- 
tion and  measurers  of  time  of  the  races  who  grew  the  wet 
crops  of  the  Indian  rainy  season,  and  the  dry  crops  of  the 
autumn.  It  was  they  who  were  the  worshippers  of  the 
heavenly  twins,  day  and  night,  the  children  of  the  goddess 
Sar,  the  barley  mother,  before  they  became  the  twin-stars  of 
the  constellation  Gemini,  the  star-gods  of  the  sons  of  Kush, 
the  tortoise.  These  eleven  gods  of  generation  were  the 
eleven  keys  which,  in  the  Gond  Epic,  Lingal  is  said  to 
have  fixed  on  his  musical  bow,  a  metaphor  exactly  similar 
to  that  which  likened  the  first  reckoning  of  the  seven  days 
of  the  week  as  a  measurement  of  time  by  the  sons  of  Kush, 
the  tortoise,  to  the  seven  strings  placed  by  Hermes,  the 
fire-god,  on  the  tortoise-shell  to  turn  it  into  the  lyre,  an 
instrument  producing  music  by  the  regular  succession  of 
concordant  notes.^  The  whole  story  tells  us  how  the  sons 
of  the  squirrel  came  from  the  north-east  into  the  country 
of  the  matriarchal  villagers,  who  are  described  as  cannibals, 
and  as  acquainted  with  the  art  of  making  fire  from  wood 
by  friction,  and  who  had  also  learned  how  to  grow  dry  crops 
and  rice,  and  to  live  in  villages.  It  was  from  them  that  the 
new-comers  learnt  these  arts,  and  became  the  rice  and  murwa- 
growing  Dravidians,  the  forest  races  who  are  known  as  the 

*  Hislop,  Aboriginal  Tribes  of  the  Central  ProvitueSy  published  by  the 
Government  of  the  Central  Provinces,  1865.    Song  of  Lingal ^  Cantos  i.  and  ii. 

4 


60    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Bhuyas,  Musahars,  Kharwars,  and  Mundas,  all  of  whom 
regard  the  squirrel  {Rikhi  or  Rukhi)  as  their  ancestor,  whom 
they  call  Rikhiasan  or  Rikhmun  ;^  and  it  is  from  these  sons 
of  the  squirrel  that  the  Cheroos,  the  sons  of  the  Nag,  or 
water-snake,  are  descended,  for  the  Kharwars  are  a  branch  of 
the  Cheroos.^  These  Cheroos  were  the  great  ruling  race  of 
Behar,  whose  power  lasted  till  the  sixteenth  century  a.d.,  for 
it  was  then  that  their  chief  Muharta  was  conquered  by 
Khawas  Khan,  the  general  of  the  Emperor  Sher  Shah.^  Thus 
we  find  that  these  forest  tribes,  who  were  the  first  rice- 
growers,  are  those  who  are  at  the  bottom  of  the  social  scale 
or  ethnological  ladder  of  the  Hindu  castes,  and  I  show  in 
Esi»ay  III.  that  the  superposition  of  the  successive  stages, 
each  marking  a  rise  in  organisation,  was  the  work  of  many 
ages.  The  great  antiquity  of  the  Munda  and  Dravidian  village 
system  is  also  shown  by  the  Munda  monuments,  for  every 
Munda  grave  is  still  marked  by  the  upriglit  stone,  the 
memorial  stone  of  the  Khasia  hills,  and  they  are  total  strangers 
to  the  later  '  storied  monuments'  of  the  men  of  the  Dekhan, 
who  have  covered  the  country  with  '  dolmens,**  stone-tables, 
shrines  or  altars,  '  cromlechs,**  stone  circles,  and  *  tumuli  **  or 
burial-mounds,  exactly  similar  to  those  of  the  Neolithic  Age 
in  Europe.*  The  rice-plant  itself  also  shows  to  what  an 
early  period  its  cultivation  must  extend,  for  it  must  have 
taken  ages  to  develop  the  two  hundred  varieties  of  rice 
which  are  said  by  Hindu  rice-dealers  to  exist,  and  that  these 
numbers  are  not  extravagantly  exaggerated  I  can  myself 
vouch,  for  when  I  was  Settlement  Officer  in  Chuttisgurh,  I 
learned  to  discriminate  in  that  one  district  about  forty  kinds, 
which  I  could  distinguish  while  growing  on  the  ground 
before  the  rice  was  cut.     To  this  evidence  must  be  added 

^  Risley,  Tribes  aftd  Castes  of  Bengal y  vol.  i.  p.  112,  ff.      Bhuiyas,  vol.  ii. 
pp.  210-21 1,  if.,  Rikhi,  Rikhiasan,  Rikmun,  Rukhi. 

*  Ibid.  vol.  i.  pp.  200-201,  s.v.  Chero. 

'  Y}X\Q\.\  Supplementary  Glossary^  N.W.P.,  s.v.  Cheroo. 
•■*  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  2nd  edition,  chap,  v.,  pp.  129,  120,  121  ; 
also  p.  104,  note. 


ESSAY  II  51 

that  taken  from  the  rice  export  trade,  for  it  was  known  to 
the  Greeks  as  opv^a^  a  name  derived  from  the  Tamil  a/w, 
and  it  must,  therefore,  as  I  show  in  Essay  m.,  liave  been 
probably  exported  to  Europe  in  times  long  before  the 
publication  of  the  Rigveda  and  the  formation  of  the  present 
Prakrit  dialects,  which  were  most  probably  the  language 
spoken  at  the  western  export  ports  of  Baragyza  (Broach)  and 
Surparaka  (Surat),  in  the  days  of  the  Kanva  bards  who 
wrote  the  8th  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda,  and  were  the  priests 
of  the  Yadu-Tarvashu,  the  rulers  of  Western  India.  But 
whether  this  conclusion  as  to  the  language  of  Western  India 
in  Vedic  times  be  true  or  not,  the  other  evidence  I  have 
adduced  proves  conclusively  that  rice  cultivation  flourished 
in  Central  and  Southern  India  in  the  early  Stone  Age,  count- 
less ages  before  the  Veda  was  written,  and  that  it  was  the 
growing  of  rice  which  led  to  the  formation  of  permanent 
villages,  first  among  the  matriarchal  races  descended  from 
the  tree  (marom)  mothers,  and  afterwards  among  the  united 
races  formed  by  the  union  of  the  sons  of  the  squirrel  (Rikhi 
or  Rukhi)  with  those  of  the  tree  (Rukh\  and  it  was  they  who 
became  the  sons  of  the  ssL\-tree{Shorea  robiista)^the  father-tree 
of  the  Dravidian  races.  This  is  the  characteristic  tree  of  the 
forests  of  Eastern  India,  and  it  is  groves  of  these  trees  which 
generally  form  the  Samas  of  the  Munda  villages,  but  in 
Chuttisgurh,  where  the  sal-tree  is  replaced  by  the  saja  (TVr- 
minalia  tomentosa\  it  is  this  latter  tree  which  becomes  the 
sacred  tree  of  the  Gonds. 

The  earliest  matriarchal  cultivators  did  not  use  cattle  in 
their  culture,  but  tilled  the  land  by  hand  labour  with 
pointed  sticks ;  and  it  was  not  till  the  arrival  of  the  sons  of 
the  wild  cow,  the  Gaurian  race  descended  from  the  goddess 
Gauri,  the  mother  bison  (Bos  gaums),  that  buffaloes  and 
cattle  were  tamed.  The  use  of  cattle  for  agricultural  pur- 
poses would  have  been  impossible  in  tlie  tiger-haunted 
forests  of  the  earliest  settlers  ;  and  that  neither  they  nor  their 
allies,  the  Mons,  were  a  pastoral  race  is  proved  by  the  fact 


52    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

that  even  now  the  Munda  and  Ho  Kols  do  not  drink  milk, 
and  thus  answer  the  description  of  the  race  called  Kikatas 
in  the  Rigveda,  who  are  spoken  of  as .  neighbours  of  the 
Kushika  and  Bharatas,  who  pour  no  libations  of  milk.^ 

In  each  of  these  Kolarian  villages,  the  central  place  is 
allotted  to  the  Sarna  and  the  Akra  or  dancing-ground,^ 
shaded  by  its  trees.  The  spot  preferably  chosen  is  one  on  a 
tongue  of  land  rising  above  two  lateral  valleys,  where  the  dry 
rice  crops  and  those  of  murwa  (Eletmne  coracanci)  and 
goondlt  can  be  grown  on  the  hill-slopes,  and  the  wet  rice  in 
the  lands  at  the  bottom  of  the  valley;  and  it  is  this  cultivated 
land,  separating  the  village  from  the  non-productive  forest, 
which  became  in  the  earliest  mythologies  its  guardian  and 
father,  the  protecting  snake.\JEach  village  is  ruled  by  a  head- 
man called  Munda,  elected  by  the  people,  assisted  in  large 
villages  by  a  council  of  elders,  who  are  chosen  as  leaders  of 
the  different  sections  or  wards,  into  which  the  cultivators 
are  divided,  when  the  lands  are  redistril)uted  at  the  periodi- 
cal re-divisions,  which  used  till  recently  to  be  made  in  all 
the  villages  of  Chuttisgurh,  in  Central  India.  At  these  the 
village  lands  are  all  divided  into  a  number  of  separate  and 
equal  lots — generally  five  or  three — the  area  of  each  being 
calculated  according  to  the  number  of  measures  of  seed  it 
took  to  sow  it  (the  most  common  form  of  measurement  in 
villages  where  rice  is  almost  the  only  crop  grown),  or  by  the 
number  of  ploughing  strips  ploughed  by  the  cultivators  told 
off  to  form  the  section,  or  the  number  of  plough  bullocks 
owned  by  each  ;^  and  these  two  last  methods  of  measure- 
ments are  generally  used  when  the  upland  or  plough-culti- 
vation, which  was  introduced  much  later  than  the  rice,  forms 
an  important  part  of  the  cultivated  land.  Tlie  land  as- 
signed to  each  lot  was  carefully  discriminated  by  the  head- 

^  Rigveda,  iii.  53,  11-14. 

-  Can  the  Greek  Akro  in  Akro-pohs  be  derived  from  the  Munda  Akra  ? 
The  German  Gau  is  certainly  derived  from  the  Munda  Gowa, 
^  A  plough  area  ploughed  by  four  bullocks  is  about  equal  to  22  acres. 


ESSAY  II  53 

man  and  the  heads  of  sections,  or,  as  we  would  call  them, 
the  ward's  men ;  and  each  section  received  an  exactly  equal 
portion  of  every  kind  of  soil  existing  in  the  village,  so  that 
their  fields  were  scattered  all  over  its  area,  and  no  section 
formed  a  compact  lot.  Each  section  is  marked  by  some 
chosen  symbol,  and  these  symbols  are  all  placed  together  in 
one  receptacle  ;  while  in  another  are  those  chosen  as  symbols 
by  the  heads  of  wards,  and  the  symbol  of  the  ward's  man 
and  that  of  the  land  allotted  to  his  party  are  drawn  to- 
gether. He  then  proceeds  to  divide  the  lands  so  assigned 
between  the  cultivators,  who  form  his  ward.  But  the  vil- 
lages thus  governed  were  not  isolated  communities,  for,  as  I 
said  before,  the  fathers  of  the  children  of  one  matriarchal 
vttlage  must  always  be  men  living  in  other  villages,  and 
hence  the  area  of  the  land  belonging  to  each  association  of 
villages  must  originally,  like  those  occupied  by  Korwa  tribes, 
have  been  very  large  when  compared  with  the  scanty  nuni- 
bers  of  the  original  Kol  settlers.  These  large  tribal  areas 
were  a  legacy  from  the  hunting  races  who  required  a  very 
much  larger  space  for  subsistence  than  that  sufficing  for  agri- 
culturists, and  these  hunting  tribes  divided  themselves,  as 
the  Korwas  do  now,  into  different  settlements,  each  living  in 
a  different  part  of  the  tribal  territory,  and  it  was  from  these 
that  the  permanent  villages  were  subsequently  formed.  It 
was  by  the  unions  between  the  men  and  women  of  these 
different  settlements  at  the  hunting  gatherings,^  which 
answered  among  the  hunting  races  to  the  seasonal  tribal- 
dances  among  the  matriarchal  agriculturists  that  the 
alliances  between  the  whole  body  of  allied  tribesmen  were 
cemented.      It   was  from  the  territories   occupied    by  the 

*  I  remember  some  thirty  years  ago  when  continuous  forests  stretched  from 
one  end  to  another  of  the  Lohardugga  district  of  Chota  Nagpore,  and  through 
the  States  bounding  Midnapore  on  the  west,  that  the  whole  country  used 
to  turn  out  in  the  end  of  March  or  the  beginning  of  April,  and  beat  through 
the  whole  length  of  the  forests,  each  village  taking  its  assigned  place  in  the 
line  of  beaters.  These  hunting  parties  used  to  last  for  weeks  till  the  whole 
forest  tract  was  thoroughly  beaten  out. 


54    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

settlements  of  those  who  had  coalesced  into  a  tribe  that  tlie 
parhas  or  provinces,  into  which  the  Munda  confederation 
was  divided,  were  formed.  Each  parha  contains  about 
twelve  or  more  townships,  and  it  was  the  villages  of  each 
parhu  which  formed  the  matrimonial  unions  I  have  de- 
scribed in  Essay  iii.  Esich  parha  had  its  distinguishing 
crest  or  cognisance,  which  is  now  shown  on  the  parha  flags. 
These  are  always  carried  at  all  Munda  social  gatherings,  and 
it  is  quarrels  about  the  precedence  or  reverence  due  to  each 
of  these  flags  which  even  now  give  rise  frequently  to  tribal 
differences.  Each  parha  is  governed  by  a  head-chief  called 
*  Manki,"*  who  is  the  Munda  of  the  village,  which  has  ac- 
quired hereditary  precedence  among  the  associated  villages, 
and  which  is  probably  that  which  first  became  populous,  and 
was  consequently  able  to  send  out  colonies  to  form  tolas 
or  hamlets  in  the  unoccupied  tribal  lands,  and  wliich  thus 
acquired  the  privilege  of  being  the  residence  of  the  Byga 
or  tribal-priest  and  medicine-man^  Tliis  privilege  must,  if  re- 
tained, have  certainly  have  given  the  Byga^s  village  the  posi- 
tion of  tribal  capital,  for  the  Korwas  cluster  about  their  Byga, 
who  is  also  arrow-maker  to  the  tribe,  as  bees  about  tlieir 
qucen.J  When  in  the  years  1882-83,  it  was  necessary  to  arrest 
the  leaders  of  one  of  the  Korwa  tribes  in  Sirgoojya,  who  liad 
with  their  tribesmen  taken  to  wholesale  plundering,  I  found 
it  very  difficult  to  do  so,  owing  to  the  facilities  for  hiding 
furnished  by  the  dense  forest  in  which  they  lived.  But  when 
the  Byga  had  been  secured,  the  rest  of  the  tribe,  except  those 
who  were  most  guilty,  came  in  almost  immediately  to 
join  him.  But  thougli  the  Byga  has  great  influence 
among  the  hunting  tribes,  especially  among  the  Korwas, 
it  is  the  Manki  who  is  the  real  chief  of  the  agricultural 
villages ;  and  it  is  he  who,  among  the  civilised  Ho  Kols 
of  Singhbhoom,  decides  all  disputes  in  the  parha^  with 
the  assistance  of  the  village  Mundas ;  and  it  is  the 
collective  council  of  Mankis  and  Mundas  which  is  supreme 
in    the    States,  which,    like   that    of   the    Ho  Kols,    have 


ESSAY  II  55 

preserved  their  independence  as  a  confederation  of  allied 
parhas.  This  institution  is  precisely  the  same  as  that  found 
among  the  Malay  Lampoongs  of  Sumatra  and  in  the  Fiji 
Islands.  In  Sumatra,  each  village  is  divided  into  sections 
called  sukas^  the  tolas  or .  hamlets  of  a  Kol  village,  and 
while  each  suka  elects  its  headman,  the  headship  of  the 
village  is  hereditary,  as  is  that  of  the  marga  or  union  of 
viUages,  answering  to  the  Kol  parha}  In  Fiji,  each  village 
has  its  headman,  and  each  union  of  villages  its  chief;  the 
village  headman  being  called  Turunga  Nikoro,  and  the 
provincial  chief  Mballi,  who  exaictly  answers  to  the  Kol 
Manki ;  while  the  supreme  master  of  the  confederated  pro- 
vinces or  parhas  is  called  Roko.  These  Fijians  also,  like 
the  Marya  or  tree-Gonds  and  other  forest  tribes,  who  are 
descended  directly  from  the  matriarchal  tree-worshippers, 
and  not  partly  from  the  sons  of  tlie  mountain,  like  the 
Mundas  and  their  congeners,  treat  the  children  born  from 
parents  l)elonging  to  the  confederaicy  as  children  of  the 
village  where  they  are  born,  and  bring  up  all  the  boys  and 
young  men  together  in  a  building  exactly  answering  to  the 
Dhumkuria  or  bachelors  hall  of  the  Indian  forest  races, 
while  the  girls  are  brought  by  a  village  matron.  They  are 
also,  like  the  Dravidians  of  the  Madras  and  Malabar  coasts, 
experienced  and  adventurous  seamen,  who  have,  like  the 
Northern  Vikings,  learnt  without  foreign  assistance  how  to 
make  canoes  fit  for  distant  voyages.^ 

It  was  under  this  form  of  government  that  the  lands  of 
India  were  gradually  apportioned  among  villages  united  into 
provinces,  and  governed  by  the  matriarchal  Dravidians  from 
the  south,  united  with  the  Mons  from  the  north-east ;  and 
though  tlie  cultivation  was  scanty,  and  large  areas  of  land 
unsuited  to  the  growing  of  rice,  and  the  other  national  crops 
were  left  unoccupied,  yet  the  country  must,  under  the  rule 

^  Forbes,  Wanderings  of  a  Naturalist  in  the  Eastern  Archipelago, 
^  Abercromby,  Seas  and  Skies  in  many  Latitudes^  pp.  192  and  97,  loi- 
104. 


d 


56    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

of  the  matriarchal  races,  have  attained  a  stage  of  civilisation 
which  not  only  attracted  the  cupidity  of  Northern  immi- 
grants, but  also  led  to  extensive  emigration  among  the  tribes 
living  on  the  Western  coasts.  The  first  outsiders  who  amal- 
gamated with  these  matriarchal  tribes,  the  first  founders  of 
villages  and  provinces  in  Southern  India,  were  the  Mons  or 
four  Gonds  of  the  Soixg  ofLtngaly  of  whose  coming  I  have 
already  spoken.  Those  tribes,  which  now  trace  their  descent 
directly  from  these  immigrants,  do  not  follow  the  custom  of 
separately  educating  the  village  male  and  female  children 
which  distinguishes  the  forest  races.  And  it  is  these 
Northern  sons  of  the  mountain  who  introduced  the  form  of 
marriage  called  by  Morgan,  Punuluan,  in  which  a  number  of 
brothers  united  by  blood  brotherhood  married  a  number  of 
sisters,  who,  as  in  the  Song  of  Lingal^  belonged  to  the 
matriarchal  races,  and  were,  therefore,  as  being  the  women 
of  the  same  village,  all  tribally  looked  on  as  sisters.  Under 
these  marriages,  of  whicli  only  traces  exist  among  the  Ho 
and  Munda  Kols,  in  customs  which  I  have  alluded  to  in 
Essay  in.,  the  old  village  relationships  of  the  matriarchal  age 
were  completely  changed.  By  matriarchal  custom  the 
mothers  and  educating  fathers  and  instructors  of  the  village 
children  were  looked  on  for  matrimonial  purposes  as 
brothers  and  sisters ;  but  all  the  village  children  called  them 
mothers  and  fathers.  But  under  the  Punuluan  system,  the 
real  fathers  of  the  village  children,  instead  of  remaining  in 
their  own  villages  as  educators  of  their  sisters'*  children,  sent 
out  their  sisters  as  wives  to  the  men  of  another  village,  from 
which  they  themselves  took  their  wives  to  live  in  their  own 
village,  and  it  was  under  this  arrangement  that  the  fathers 
educated  their  own  children.  It  was  this  custom  which  was 
the  origin  of  that  usual  among  the  Ho  Kols,  which  makes 
young  men  and  women  of  different  villages  go  about  in 
parties  to  attend  the  village  dances.  This  change  in  tribal 
rules  gave  rise  to  a  new  system  of  relationships,  which 
Morgan  has  shown  to  be  common  to  races  so  distant  from, 


ESSAY  II  57 

and  so  apparently  unrelated  to  each  other,  as  the  Iroquois 
Indians  of  North  America  and  the  Madras  Dravidians  of 
India.  The  names  given  throughout  the  long  and  com- 
plicated tables  of  relationship  quoted  by  Morgan,  though 
linguistically  different,  have  precisely  the  same  meaning 
among  both  these  people,  and  the  leading  principle  on 
which  the  system  is  based  is  that  a  man  does  not  as  among 
the  matriarchal  tribes  call  his  sister's  son  his  son,  but  his 
nephew,  and  similarly  a  woman,  instead  of  calling  the  son 
whom  her  brother  educates  as  parent,  her  son,  calls  him 
her  nephew,  as  being  really  the  son  of  lier  brother  by  his 
wives,  who  now  live  with  him  in  his  own  village ;  and  on 
the  children'*s  side,  the  name  of  father  and  mother  applied 
to  these  relations  under  matriarchal  custom  are  replaced  by 
others  meaning  uncle  and  aunt.^ 

These  two  forms  of  matriarclial  and  patriarchal  marriage 
flourished  side  by  side  in  India ;  the  matriarchal  system 
being  generally  retained  in  South-Westem  India,  the  country 
of  the  Nairs  who  still  maintain  customs  which  are 
nearly  identical  with  those  of  the  original  forest  tribes, 
while  the  patriarchal  system  of  the  Mundiis  is  that  on  which 
the  Bengal  marriage  customs  are  founded. 

But  it  was  the  matriarchal  races  who  originally  gave  life 
to  the  social  organism,  and  they  were  not  only  a  cultivating 
but  also  a  maritime  race,  and  it  is  they  who  must  have 
developed  in  India  the  early  system  of  navigation  which 
they  had  first  learnt  in  the  Equatorial  islands.  It  was  these 
people  who,  like  the  stone  men  of  Europe,  made  use  of  the 
timber  growing  in  the  inland  forests  on  the  river  banks  and 
on  the  hills  of  the  Malabar  coast  to  build  boats  and  vessels 
in  which  they  could  navigate  the  river  reaches,  and  make 
their  way  along  the  coast.  It  was  also  they  who  first  dis- 
covered the  great  commercial  advantages  possessed  by  the 
valleys  of  the  Tapti  and  Nerbudda,  and  made  at  the 
mouths  of  these  rivers  the  settlements  which  grew  into  the 

*  See  Tabular  Statements  in  Morgan's  Aftcient  Society ^  pp.  420,  447. 


58    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

great  exporting  harbours  of  Surparaka  (Surat)  and  Baragyza 
(Broach).  But  the  first  great  emporium  of  foreign  trade 
was  Dwaraka,  tlie  mother  city  of  the  Western  Vishnava,  the 
ancient  Kathi  who  gave  the  country  its  present  name  of 
Kathiawar.  This  country  has  always  been  one  of  the  holiest 
lands  in  India,  especially  to  the  trading  races,  and  it  is  here 
that  the  most  sacred  shrines  of  tlie  Jain  religion,  which  is 
that  of  the  trading  classes,  are  situated.  It  was  the  land 
known  to  Sanskrit  authors  as  Vala-bhadra,  that  is,  of  the 
blessed  Vala,  the  Vala  or  enclosing  snake  ^  which  Indra  slew 
in  the  Rigveda.  It  was  here  in  his  honour  that  the 
great  temple  of  Somnath  the  lord  {nuth)  of  generation  {Soma\ 
who  afterwards  became  the  lord  of  the  moon  (*Sbma),  was 
built.  This  temple  was,  as  Sir  A.  Cunningham  has  shown, 
situated  in  the  town  called  Ila-pura,^  and  the  image  in  it  was 
that  of  Siva  with  the  crescent  moon,  and  this  shows  it  to  have 
been  a  temple  dedicated  to  the  ancient  bisexual  god  sym- 
bolised by  the  Linga  and  Yoni.  But  the  name  Ila-pura,  or 
city  of  Ila,  shows  that  it  was  also  consecrated  to  the  mother- 
mountain  goddess  Ida,  Ila  or  Irii  of  the  year  of  three  {iru) 
seasons  reckoned  by  the  Basque  barley-growers  of  Asia  Minor. 
This  was  the  blessed  Vala,  the  enclosing  snake  of  the  barley- 
growing  races  which  superseded  the  earth-snake,  the  guardian 
god  of  the  village  called  in  the  Soiig  qf'Lingal  the  great  snake 
BhourNiig.  This  was  killed  here  by  the  regenerated  Lingal ; 
and  his  slayer,  after  the  death  of  Bhour  Nag,  was  borne  by 
the  black  Bindo  bird,  the  god  of  the  south-west  wind  which 
brings  the  rain,  to  Mahadeo  as  the  rain-god,  the  chief  of 
the  Creator'^s  messengers  to  men. 

The  Kathi  rulers  of  Kathiawar,  the  worshippers  of  the 
rain-god,  were,  as  we  know  from  the  history  of  the  wars  of 
Alexander  the  Great,  a  powerful  tribe  in  the  Punjab,  the 
allies   of  the   Oxydracoe  and   Malli  of  Multan,  occupying 

^  Derived   from   the   root  z/r/,  to  enclose.     Grassmann,    Worterbuch  zum 
Rigveda^  s.v.  Vala. 

^  Cunningham's  Ancietit  Geography  of  I ndia^  p.  319. 


ESSAY  II  59 

the  country  between  the  Ravi  and  Chenab,  where  they  are 
still  caUed  by  their  ancient  name  of  Kathi.^  But  it  was 
not  the  Kathi  or  Hittites,  but  their  predecessors,  the  early 
matriarchal  tribes,  whose  villages  were  guarded  and  en- 
circled by  the  enclosing  snake  of  cultivated  land,  who  first 
made  Dwaraka,  the  extreme  western  point  of  the  Indian 
peninsula,  their  great  trading  port.  It  was  thence  they 
started  on  the  coasting  voyages  which  led  them  along  the 
shore  of  the  bay  which  has  since  that  time  become  the  Delta 
of  the  Indus,  and  it  was  from  Patala,  the  modern  Hyderabad 
in  Scinde,  the  port  they  founded  on  the  Indus,  that  they 
made  a  fresh  starting-point  for  their  voyages,  which  ulti- 
mately led  them  to  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  Euphratean 
countries,  and  it  was  there  that  they  founded  the  worship 
of  the  earth  tree-goddess,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay  iii., 
and  made  the  goddess,  otherwise  called  Istar,  the  goddess 
mother  of  the  villages  organised  on  the  Indian  system.  It 
was  apparently  by  way  of  the  Euphrates  valley  that  the 
Indian  village  communities  made  their  way  into  Europe, 
for  their  village  system  is  exactly  reproduced  in  that  of 
Palestine,  where  at  the  present  day  the  lands  are  every 
year  distributed  among  the  cultivators  exactly  in  the  way  I 
have  described  as  that  usual  in  India.-  It  is  this  system 
which  ultimately  found  its  way  into  Germany  where  the 
organisation  of  the  Gemeinde,  with  its  lands  divided  into 
strips,  and  ruled  by  tlie  elected  Burgomeister,  is  exactly 
the  same  as  that  of  the  Indian  village,  and  it  is  there  that 
the  German  Gau^  meaning  district,  exactly  reproduces  the 
Kolarian  Gawa^  the  village  or  district.  And  a  similar  iden- 
tity of  language  is  found  in  the  Greek  Ge^  a  contraction  for 
Gea^  and  in  the  name  of  Gala^  the  earth-mother.  It  was 
these  same  people  who  took  with  them  their  village  system 
from  India  who  also  took  with  them  their  seasonal  dances 


*  Cunningham's  Ancient  Geography  of  India ^  pp.  215,  216. 

*  *  Land-tenure  in  the  Village  Communities  of  Palestine,'  by  Kev.  J.  Neill. 
Transactions  0/  Victoria  Institute y  No.  xcv.  vol.  xxiv.  pp.  155-159. 


A 


60    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

and  the  other  accompanying  customs  which  I  have  traced  in 
Essay  in.     It  was  in  Asia  Minor  or  Northern  Palestine  ^ 
where  they  apparently  first   found  out  how   to  make  the 
grasses  developed  into  wheat  and  barley  good  substitutes 
for  their  Indian  grass  developed  into  rice,  murwa  or  raggi, 
and  gundli,  and  it  was  in  Asia  Minor  that  they  met  with 
the  fire-worshipping  race  of  Phrygia  who  were  worshippers  of 
the  Linga  before  they  worshipped  fire.    It  was  these  people 
who  introduced  phallic  worship  into  India,  and  its  introduc- 
tion is  depicted  in  the  last  part  of  Canto  ii.  of  the  Song 
of  Linffal^  which  tells  how   the  seven  wives  of  the  Gond 
brothers  tried,  when  their  husbands  were  away  on  a  hunting 
expedition,  to  make  Lingal,  who   had  hitherto  been  their 
teacher  and  instructor,  their  common  husband,  and  began 
the  custom  still  observed  in  India  of  swinging  the  god  of  the 
Linga.     It  was  after  this  that  Lingal,  who  had  in  the  poem 
refused  their  advances,  was  killed  by  them  and  their  husbands, 
a  story  which  is  a  mytliical  way  of  saying  that  the  original 
religion  of  Lingal  which,  as  I  show  in  the  Preface,  was  the 
worship  of  the  seed  grain,  the  father  of  the  ripened  corn, 
was  corrupted   by  phallic    worship.    It   was  these  phallic- 
worshippers  and  the  fire-worshippers  who,  as  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  iii.,  introduced  magic  and  witclicraft,  and  added  the 
worsliip  of  the  mother  Magha  to  that  of  the  village  mother. 
It   was   they,   who   are   known    in   Indian    history   as   the 
Maghadas,  who  introduced  the  growth  of  millets  into  India 
as  upland  crops — these,  according  to  the  Song  of  Lingal  pre- 
ceded the  growth  of  barley — and  who  first  cultivated  on  a 
large  scale  the  wide  plains  of  Upper  India,  which  were  not 
suited  for  the  growing  of  rice.     They  were  followed  by  the 
growers  of  barley,  who,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  are  the 
race  from  whom  the  Ooraons  claim  to  be  descended,  and  it 
was  they  who  made  the  great  change  in  village  and  state 
organisation,    which   is  shown  in  the  Ooraon  constitution. 

*  Perhaps  barley  cultivation  may  have  been  discovered  in  the  Euphralean 
valley,  but  it  is  a  question  for  botanists  to  determine. 


ESSAY  II  61 

These  Turano-Dravidian  people  and  their  congeners,  the 
Bhuyas  and  other  ruling  forest  races,  are  not  lively  and 
excitable  like  the  Kols ;  they  say  little  and  are  very  self- 
contained,  but  tliey  are  patient  and  laborious,  amenable  to 
discipline  and  authority,  though  indomitably  obstinate  in 
everything  they  undertake.  They  are  also  very  careful  to  see 
that  they  get  all  possible  profit  out  of  what  they  do.  They 
are  keen  traders  and  are  so  named  in  the  Rigveda,  but  the 
word  Pam^  by  which  they  are  designated,  means  '  avaricious,'' 
as  well  as  a  trader ;  and  this  reproach  the  worse  specimens  of 
tlie  race  thoroughly  deserve.  Their  silent  and  undemonstra- 
tive demeanour  does  not  denote  a  want  of  intellect,  but  a 
determination  to  see  all  round  a  subject,  and  to  know  it  in 
all  its  phases.  And  wlien  once  a  Dravidian  Bhuya  has  been 
convinced  that  the  course  he  is  advised  to  take  is  the  best 
for  him,  and  when  once  he  has  said  that  he  will  take  it, 
he  may  be  trusted  to  be  true  to  his  word,  and  he  is  not 
liable  to  the  sudden  changes  of  purpose  which  make  the 
Munda  races  so  frequently  unreliable. 

While  these  people  were  not  at  any  time  fond  of  war  and 
adventure  in  itself,  or  eager  for  personal  glory  and  distinc- 
tion, they  were  always  ready  to  fight  when  it  was  necessary 
to  do  so,  and,  except  among  the  Ghoorkas,  I  do  not  believe 
better  material  for  soldiers  exists  in  India  than  among  the 
Bhuyas  and  Ho  Kols  of  Chota  Nagpore.  But  their  wars 
were  either  wars  of  defence  or  wars  caused  by  the  pressure  of 
)K)pulation,  with  the  consequent  necessity  of  enlarging  their 
boundaries,  or  waged  with  the  object  of  increasing  facilities 
for  trade.  In  these  they  were  equally  stubborn  in  defence 
and  attack,  but  they  never  fought  for  booty  or  temporary 
fame,  and  were  always  ready  to  do  what  was  possible  to 
conciliate  the  people  of  a  conquered  country,  so  far  as  was 
consistent  with  their  main  purpose.  In  India  the  only 
reminiscences  of  wars  between  these  people  and  the  earlier 
inhabitants  are  to  be  found  in  the  Zend  myths  and  those  of 
the  Northern  Punjab,  to  which  I  have  referred  in  Essay  in.. 


i 


62     THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

but  even  then  their  entry  into  the  country,  as  described  in 
the  Song  qfLbigal^  was  generally  peaceful.  The  agricultural 
races  who  first  ruled  India  have  always  been  a  hospitable 
and  tolerant  race,  who  received  strangers  as  the  Mundas  of 
Chota  Nagpore  received  the  Ooraons,  and  allowed  them  to 
take  up  unoccupied  lands  in  the  country  without  difficulty. 
They  also  admired  these  new-comers  and  were  impressed 
with  their  genius  for  organisation  and  government,  and  saw 
the  advantages  arising  from  their  political  system.  The 
great  and  fundamental  difference  between  this  and  the 
republican  government  of  the  Munda  village  and  state  was 
the  Turanian  belief  that  a  strong  central  government  ruled 
by  a  king  was  the  best  means  of  securing  order  and  unity, 
and  enforcing  the  observance  of  the  Dravidian  maxim  that 
every  man  and  woman  must  do  his  or  her  duty  to  the  State. 
They  retained  the  Dravidian  association  of  villages,  the  first 
germ  of  a  State,  according  to  Aristotle ;  ^  but  they  greatly 
enlarged  the  original  parha  in  their  provincial  divisions, 
massing,  as  the  Ooraons  did  in  making  their  central 
province  of  Kokhra  in  Lohardugga,  many  parhas  to- 
gether to  form  a  province  of  the  new  regime,  and  they 
placed  the  central  province  under  their  king  and  allotted 
the  outlying  provinces  to  his  most  trusty  subordinates. 
Thus  their  kingdoms  were  organised  on  the  model  of  a  camp 
arranged,  like  the  Roman  legion,  with  the  head -quarters  in 
the  centre.  It  is  this  organisation  which  shows  that  the  his- 
torical epoch  at  which  it  appeared  was  that  of  Kushika 
rule,  the  origin  of  which  I  have  explained  in  Essay  in.,  when 
the  confederated  tribes  gathered  round  the  mountain  of  the 
East,  which  they  looked  on  as  their  birthplace,  likened  the 
civilised  earth  to  the  tortoise  floating  on  the  primaeval 
ocean,  and  depicted  in  their  minds  the  supreme  ruler  of  the 
kingdoms  surrounding  the  central  mountain  as  the  mysteri- 
ous creator,  the  great  NSga  shrouded  from  mortal  ken  in  the 
ark  of  clouds  which  wreaths  its  summit. 

^  Aristotle,  Politics^  i.  2. 


ESSAY  II  63 

In  order  to  ensure  the  permanence  of  their  national  tradi- 
tions, the  Kushikas  insisted  most  strongly  on  the  systematic 
instruction  and  education  of  the  young,  and  they  used  as 
their  model  the  Dravidian  arrangements  for  the  training  of 
the  village  children    of  the   matriarchal    village.     By   this 
systematic  method  of  education  the  lives  of  all  the  younger 
members  of  the  community  were  passed  in  a  course  of  dis- 
cipline, of  which  the  Spartan  education,  descended  from  the 
tribal  ancestors  of  the  Dorians,  is  the  best  specimen.     I  have 
shown  in  Essay  iii.  how  closely  the  Dorian  customs  are  allied 
to  those  of  the  Indian  Nagas,  and  the  remembrance  of  these 
national  training-schools  still  survives  in  the  schools  of  the 
Brahmans  among  the  Hindus,  the  Roman  and  Greek  educa- 
tion, and  in  that  of  the  ancient  Persians  or  Parthians.     They, 
like  their  brethren,  the  Parthian  cavalry  of  India,  were  taught 
to  ride,  shoot  with  the  bow,  and  to  speak  the  truth.    But  the 
first  founders  of  national  education  were  an  agricultural  race, 
and  tlie  lessons  they  had  to  teach  their  young  pupils  were 
not  the  rules  of  the  art  of  war,  or  the  mysteries  of  religion, 
but  those  which  embodied  the  results  attained  by  the  long 
series  of  experiments  which  had  formed  a  national  science  of 
agriculture.     To  enable  these  lessons  to  be  transmitted  from 
generation  to  generation,   in  a   form    which  secured    them 
from  distortion,  they  were  embodied  in  mythic  tales,  which 
were  carefully  repeated  by  each  generation  of  scholars  after 
their  teacher  till  they  became  indelibly  impressed  on  their 
memory.  Everyone  who  has  listened  to  Hindu  scholars  repeat- 
ing their  lessons  after  their  master  will  understand  how  this 
was  done,  and  it  is  to  this  systematic  training  of  the  memory 
that  we  owe  the  preservation  of  innumerable  works  which  have 
descended  to  us  in  Sanskrit,  Pali,  and  Prakrit  literature.    All 
the  early  Buddhist  works   are   systematically  divided  into 
short  paragraphs  capable  of  being  learned  by  heart ;  and  in 
Bralmiinical  training,  oral  teaching  has  always  been  preferred 
to  lessons  learned  by  the  pupil  from  books  he  read.     The  form 
in  which  most  of  these  early  myths  have  been  transmitted  to  us 


J 


64    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

is  that  of  a  record  of  the  seasonal  changes,  as  accurate  know- 
ledge on  this  subject  is  necessary  for  all  successful  farming, 
and  perhaps  the  most  significant  of  these  is  the  myth  of 
Nala  and  Damayanti  as  given  in  the  Mahabharata.^  It  is  a 
tale  of  Southern  India,  for  Nala,  the  hero,  was  the  son  of 
Viru-sena,  that  is,  of  the  army  {sena)  of  the  Viru  worshippers, 
the  name  given  to  the  prehistoric  races  whose  god  was  the 
earlier  Linga  or  sign  of  sex.  He  was  the  chief  of  the  Nis- 
had  has,  that  is,  of  the  races  who  were  not  (im)  worshippers 
of  the  fish-god  (Jshadha\  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  was 
identical  with  the  god  As-s6r  of  the  Assyrians,  the  la  of 
the  Akkadians,  the  Ya  of  the  Hindus,  and  the  Yah-veh  of 
the  Jews.  His  name  Nala  means  a  channel,  and  he  is  the 
god  of  the  ordinary  course  and  channel  of  nature,  the  gentle 
winds  which  bring  the  fertilising  showers  of  spring. 

His  queen  Damayanti,  whose  name  means,  'she  who  is  being 
tamed,"*  is  the  earth,  which  is  being  gradually  brought  under 
cultivation.  She  is  the  daughter  of  Bhima,  whose  name 
means,  '  the  terrible  one,"*  who  is  worshipped  by  the  Gonds, 
Dosadhs,  and  all  the  lower  Hindu  castes  as  *  the  thunder-god."* 
This  was,as  I  have  shown  in  Essays  iii.  and  iv.,  the  first  form  in 
which  the  god  of  heaven  was  worshipped;  and  as  his  daughter, 
the  earth  tilled  by  the  worshippers  of  the  thunder-god,  is 
the  heroine  of  the  story,  we  are  told  at  its  outset  that  it  is 
one  which  tells  us  the  earth"'s  history  after  the  thunder-god 
was  superseded  by  a  later  and  mightier  deity.  Bhima  was 
king  of  the  Vid-arbas,  or  of  the  double  race ;  the  eight  tribes, 
four  (arba)  aboriginal,  and  four  immigrant,  into  which,  as  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  the  Gond  race,  who  were  the  first 
rulers  of  the  Kushika,  or  people  of  the  tortoise  earth,  were 
divided.  The  land  of  the  Vidarbas  was  the  country  still 
called  Gondwana,  watered  by  the  Nerbudda  and  Tapti. 
Nala,  the  god  of  the  South,  the  home  of  the  winter  sun, 
where  lands  were  first  systematically  cultivated,  loved  Dama- 

^  Mahabharata  Vana  {Nolo  pakhyana)  Parva.     The  Section  {Parva)  of  the 
ripening  [^Pakhyana)  of  Nalo,  liL-lxxix.  pp.  157-234. 


ESSAY  II  65 

yanti  on  hearing  of  her  beauty,  anil  told  his  love  to  the 
swans  or  rather  the  geese  (kama),  the  moon-birds,  the  lunar 
phases  which  marked  the  passage  of  time.  When  they  had 
announced  the  arrival  of  the  fated  moment,  Nala,  who  was 
chosen  by  Indra  the  rain-god  and  the  gods  of  heaven  as  their 
messenger,  entered  Damayantrs  apartment  unperceived.^ 
She  chose  Nala  as  her  husband,  and  two  children  were  born 
to  them  in  the  spring-time,  a  son,  Indra-scn,  and  a  daughter, 
Indra-seni,  the  fruits  of  the  earth  born  from  the  fertilising 
rains  of  Indu,  the  essence  or  soul  of  life  in  water,  carried  to 
the  earth  by  the  soft  breezes  of  the  opening  year.  But  all  this 
time  Kali,  the  black  storm-wind,  who  had  been  rejected  as  a 
suitor  by  Damayanti,  was  nursing  his  wrath,  and  at  the  end 
of  the  twelfth  year  of  marriage  he  prepared  the  misfortunes 
of  the  thirteenth  year  (sacred  to  the  moon  and  lunar  year  of 
thirteen  months)  by  entering  into  the  mind  of  Nala  as  an 
evil  spirit,  and  making  him  gamble  with  Pushkara.  I  have 
shown  in  Essay  iii.  the  mythological  history  of  Pushkara,  the 
maker  (hard)  of  Push,  the  spirit  or  soul  of  life,  which  makes 
plants  to  grow  {pu\  who  was  the  god  who  ruled  the  summer 
season  of  the  burning  west-winds,  which  temporarily  kill 
all  life  in  nature.  It  is  the  deadening  influence  of  these 
blasts,  which  is  described  in  the  myth  as  the  triumph  of  the 
gambler,  who  beggars  Nala  and  wins  from  him  his  kingdom. 
Before  this  final  catastrophe,  Damayanti  fearing  the  conse- 
quences of  her  husband\s  losses,  sent  Varshneya,  the  rains 
{Varsha)  of  the  rainy  season,  Nalas  charioteer,  with  her 
children  to  Kundina,  her  fathers  capital,  on  the  west 
coast,  whence  the  south-west  monsoon  comes  up  to  refresh 
the  country  parched  by  the  summer''s  heat.  Varshneya  left 
them  there,  and  then  came  up  as  the  south-west  monsoon 
to  Ayodhya,  where  he  took  service  with  King  Ritii-pama, 
the  roll  {pamd)  or  book  of  the  seasons  (ritu),  Pushkara, 
the  god  of  the  storms  which  usher  in  the  rains,  turned  out 
Nala  and  Damayanti  into   the  forest.     Nala  lost  his  last 

*  Vana  {Na/o  Pakhyana)  Parva,  liv-lv. 

5 


66    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

garment,  his  waist-cloth,  meaning  the  last  remnant  of  his 
power  of  control  by  trying  to  catch  with  it,  for  food  for 
iiimself  and  DamayantI,  some  golden  birds  (the  clouds)  who 
took  it  up  to  heaven,  and  thus  made  the  clouds  the  heavenly 
symbols  of  the  village  lands  on  earth,  the  plots  enclosed  in 
the  boundaries  marked  by  the  girdling  snake  of  cultivated 
land,  the  home  of  the  soul  of  life  on  earth  residing  in  the 
*  Sama**  or  sacred  grove.  Thus  this  part  of  the  myth  tells 
us  how  the  home  of  the  seeds  of  life  was  changed  from  earth 
to  heaven. 

As,  during  the  storms  which  begin  the  rains,  an  orderly 
direction  of  the  course  of  the  wind  was  impossible,  Nala  its 
ruler  deserted  DamayantI.  The  two  henceforth  went 
different  ways ;  DamayantI,  wandering  alone,  was  seized  by 
a  serpent,  the  snake  worshipped  in  the  month  of  §ravana 
(July-August),  in  the  middle  of  the  rains,  and  was  rescued  by 
a  hunter,  who  killed  the  serpent.  This  hunter  on  soliciting 
her  was  struck  dead.  This  part  of  the  story  is  reproduced 
in  the  Greek  myth  of  Artemis  and  Orion,  in  which  Orion, 
the  hunter  constellation,  was  struck  dead  by  Artemis,  the 
moon-goddess,  or,  as  Aratus  tells  us,  by  the  scorpion  sent  by 
Artemis,  who  made  him  disappear,  that  is,  begin  to  sink  below 
the  horizon.*  And  both  stories  tell  us  how,  in  the  ancient 
stellar  year,  the  month  of  the  snakes  or  scorpions  was  that 
in  which  Orion  culminated  and  began  to  sink.  This  month, 
in  which  Orion  and  Sirius  reached  the  middle  of  heaven, 
was,  according  to  Hesiod,that  in  which  grapes  should  be 
gathered.2  But  it  is  in  Egyptian  mythology  that  we  find 
the  complete  explanation  of  these  myths,  for  this  month  of 
the  scorpions  is  that  in  which  the  seven  scorpions,  Teftie, 

^  Aratus,  Tlie  Pkainonuna  or  Heavenly  Display^  translated  by  R.  Brown, 
Junr.,  F.S.A.,  635-646,  p.  61. 

'  Hesiod,  Works  and  Days ^  607-610. 

EiVr'  Av  V  Qplup  Kcd  ^elptot  is  fii<roy  i\$y 
OOpavdy,  ^ApKTovpop  5*  MSrj  poSoHicrvXos  'Hcis, 
t5  iriparj,  t6t€  trdpras  dir6Jpeirc  oUade  p&rpvs. 
Aet^at  5*  i^Xfy  dixa  r  ^jfiara  Kcd  dixa  vCicras. 


ESSAY  II  67 

Bene,  Mastet,  Mastetef,  Petet,  Thetet  and  Mntct,  the  seven 
days  of  the  week,  show  Isis  the  way  to  the  Papyrus  marsh, 
the  country  near  the  crocodile  city  of  Pisui,  flooded  by  the 
rise  of  the  Nile  caused  by  the  Abyssinian  rains,  where  she 
hid  herself  preparatory  to  the  birth  of  the  young  Horus.^ 
This  crocodile  city,  where  the  son  of  Isis,  the  moon-goddess, 
was  to  be  bom,  was  that  sacred  to  Osiris,  the  crocodile-god, 
called  Sel>ek  or  Maga-Sebek  the  uniter  (sbk\  whose  history 
I  have  given  in  Essay  iii.  He,  as  a  star-god,  was  the  con- 
stellation Orion,  called  Smati,-  and  we  tlius  see  that  in  the 
Egyptian  myth,  as  in  the  Hindu,  the  flying  wife  Isis  and 
Damayanti  betakes  herself  to  Orion,  who,  as  I  show  later 
on,  was  the  star  who  ruled  or  hunted  the  lunar  months  of 
the  earliest  year  measured  by  months  of  four  weeks  each, 
and  in  the  Egjrptian  myth  it  is  under  his  protection  that 
her  son  is  born.  This  is  the  new  earth  cleansed  from  taint 
of  sin  by  the  regenerating  rains  of  the  rainy  season,  and  this 
new  birth  takes  place  at  the  time  of  the  autumnal  equinox 
in  the  month  Bhadra-pada,  that  is,  of  the  blessed  (bhadra) 
foot,  which  like  Osiris,  who  was  both  the  goat  and  crocodile- 
god,  was  the  month  sacred  to  the  goat  and  the  alligator, 
and  the  time  w^hen  the  rains  cease.  This  was  the  month  in 
which,  according  to  the  Rigveda,  the  Soma  Pavamana,  the 
moon,  purified  by  the  sanctifying  rains  of  heaven,  again 
illumines  the  earth,  and  we  see  in  this  another  instance,  in 
addition  to  the  numerous  others  I  cite  in  Essay  iii.,  proving 
how  the  Egyptian  mythology  arose  out  of  the  Indian,  and 
we  can  also  trace  in  this  myth  the  route  by  which  the  myths 
were  transferred,  for  it  is  in  Akkadian  astronomy  that  we 
find  Agrabu,  the  scorpion,  taking  the  place  of  the  Hindu 
^ravana,  or  the  serpents.  It  was  only  the  philosophy  of  the 
Kushika,  originating  in  Northern  India,  which  could  ever 
have  conceived  the  story  of  the  birth  of  the  generating 
serpents,  who  were  to  be  the  parents  of  the  Niiga  race,  during 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alten  j^gypter^  pp.  402-404. 
=  Thid.  p.  202. 


68    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  month  of  August,  the  time  of  the  Indian  rains,  and  it 
was  this  original  myth,  changed  into  the  birth  of  the  purified 
earth,  which  reached  Egypt,  and  became  that  which  tells  of 
the  birth  of  the  young  Horus,  the  moon-god  of  the  later 
autumn,  under  the  protection  of  the  scorpions,  who  have 
replaced  the  serj)ents  of  the  Hindu  Naga  myth.  It  was 
after  the  death  of  the  hunter  or  the  disappearance  of  Orion 
that  DamayantI  met  with  some  religious  ascetics,  who 
prophesied  a  happy  end  to  her  misfortunes,  and  she  then 
joined  a  merchanf^s  caravan  going  to  the  city  of  Su-vahu 
(the  creating  (su)  wind),  but  they  were  attacked  and  dispersed 
by  elephants,  and  DamayantI,  with  some  Brahmins,  made  her 
way  rurrthwards  to  the  city  of  the  Chedis.  Here  we  have 
a  piece  of  mythic  history  introduced,  which  tells  us  how,  as 
I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  spiritual  religion  was  first  brought  to 
India  by  the  Vaishya,  who  became  the  Semite  trading  races, 
formed  by  the  union  of  the  yellow  Turanian  Hittites  with 
the  northern  sons  of  the  bull,  or  sun  antelope,  father  of  the 
Hindu  Brahmins.  On  her  arrival  at  Chedi,  Damayantfs 
aunt,  the  mother  of  the  solar  race  of  the  north,  did  not 
recognise  her,  and  made  her  waiting-maid  to  her  daughter, 
the  sun-maiden. 

We  have  now  to  turn  to  the  fortunes  of  Nala,  who,  when 
DamayantI  left  him,  saw  part  of  the  forest  burning,  that  is 
to  say,  he  found  himself  in  the  age  when  the  forest  races  had 
made  the  fire-god  Rahu  their  supreme  god,  instead  of  the 
wind  and  tree-god.  He  passed  safely  tlirough  the  fire,  and 
found  in  the  midst  of  the  flames  the  snake  Kar-kotaka,  the 
black  {kar)  tip  {koto)  of  the  fire-drill,  who  was  in  Hindu 
mythology  both  the  planets  Venus  and  Mercury,  the 
morning  and  evening  star;  and  as  Mercury,  the  evening 
star,  he  ruled  the  last  season  but  one  of  the  six  seasons 
of  two  months  each  into  which  the  year,  beginning 
with  the  winter  solstice,  was  divided,  that  is,  the  season 
when  the  rains  ended. ^     Kar-kotaka,  the  god  who  creates 

^  Sachau's  Alberuni*s  India^  vol.  ii.  chap.  Ixi.  pp.  Il8-I20. 


ESSAY  II  69 

the  heat  which  fosters  life,  said  he  had  been  cursed  by 
Narada,  the  god  of  men  {nara)y  that  is,  the  anthropomor- 
phic god  Linga,  whose  worshippers  had  made  the  fire-god 
the  god  of  magic,  the  god  of  the  race  of  the  Maghada,  the 
worshippers  of  Uahu  and  the  mother  Maga.  He  asked  Nala 
to  take  him  up,  and  this  incident  tells  us  how  the  god  of 
magic  was  superseded  by  the  god  who  ordained  that  the 
natural  phenomena  which  mark  the  course  of  time  should 
succeed  one  another  in  regular  order,  and  not  by  capricious 
fits  and  starts,  as  they  were  believed  to  do  when  nature  was 
thought  to  be  ruled  by  the  storm-god  and  his  priests,  the 
rain-making  magicians.  Wlien  Nala  took  up  Kar-kotaka, 
the  latter  told  him  to  count  his  footsteps  before  he  put  him 
down.  At  the  tenth  footstep,  when  the  time  of  the  new 
birth,  the  avatar  of  the  new  god,  had  arrived,  the  snake  bit 
him,  and  thus  changed  his  aspect  and  destroyed  his  beauty, 
made  him  the  god  of  the  determined  and  predestined  order 
of  nature ;  the  god  of  the  year  of  the  barley-growing  Semites, 
beginning  with  the  autumnal  equinox,  the  stern  ruler,  and 
not  the  chosen  husband  of  the  mother  earth,  and  the  loving 
father  of  her  children.  The  change,  as  Kar-kotaka  told 
Nala,  was  for  his  good,  and  he  told  him  to  go  to  Ritupama 
in  Ayodhya,  as  his  charioteer  Valiuka,  the  wind  (Vahu) 
god,  and  gave  him  two  pieces  of  celestial  cloth,  the 
twins  day  and  night,  whose  mythological  history  I  tell  in 
Essay  iii.  On  the  tenth  day,  that  is,  in  the  fulness  of 
time,  Nala  came  to  Rituparna'^s  city  and  was  engaged  as 
charioteer  with  Varshneya,  the  autumn  rains  (Varsha\ 
that  is,  the  winter  and  southern  sun,  and  Jivala  (the 
enclosing  or  fostering  snake  (vaJa)  of  life  {ji)%  the  northern 
sun  of  summer. 

All  this  time  Bhima,  Damayantfs  father,  was  distressed 
at  hearing  no  news  of  his  daughter,  and  sent  out,  among 
other  Brahmins,  Su-deva  (the  god  [deva]  of  good  fortune) 
to  look  for  her.  He  came  to  the  city  of  the  Chedis,  the 
sons  of  the  god  (id)  Cha,  the  god  Ka  of  the  Brahmanas  and 


70    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Egyptians,^  was  recognised  by  DamayantI,  and  he  told  the 
queen-mother  who  DamayantI  was.  She  told  him  that  she 
and  Damayantrs  mother  were  daughters  of  Su-darman,  the 
creating  (Su)  breaker  or  innovator  (darman\  king  of  the 
Dashamas,  or  people  of  the  ten  {dasha\  that  is,  the  race  who 
worshipped  the  moon-mother  of  the  ten  lunar  months  of 
gestation.  When  her  sister  married  Bhima,  she  married 
Vira-vahu  the  fructifying  (  Vira)  wind,  which  came  from  the 
north.  DamayantI  was  sent  home  to  her  father  by  her  aunt, 
and  thus  the  earth  was  allied  to  the  worshippers  of  the 
god  Ka.  DamayantI  on  arriving  home  sent  out,  among 
other  Brahmins,  Parnada,  the  record  (pania)  keeper,  to  look 
for  Nala,  and  thus  instituted  the  age  of  scientific  research,  of 
the  making  and  recording  of  observations.  Paraada  came 
to  the  court  of  Ritu-pama,  whose  name  is  now  changed  in 
the  legend  to  Bhailgasuri,  the  spirit  of  life  (asura)  which 
breaks  through  (bhauga)^  that  is,  the  divine  Soma  which 
descends  from  heaven,  but  did  not  recognise  Nala  or  Vahuka. 
He  however  told  DamayantI  of  a  saying  of  VahukaX  that  a 
woman  deserted  by  her  husband  should  not  be  angry  zoheii 
he  left  her  overwhelmed  by  calamity  and  deprived  by  birds  of 
his  garments  when  trying  to  obtain  food,  DamayantI,  hear- 
ing this,  sent  Su-deva  to  Ritu-parna  to  tell  him  that  on  the 
day  after  he  heard  Damayantfs  message,  she  would  choose 
another  husband.  Ritu-parna  told  Vahuka  (Nala)  that  he 
must  take  him  to  the  Vidarba  country,  or  across  India,  in  a 
day.  Nala,  choosing  horses  of  the  Sindhi  breed,  born  in  the 
land  of  Sin,  the  moon,  the  twins  Day  and  Night,  who  take 
the  sun-god  in  their  chariot,  harnessed  them  to  the  car  of 
the  winds,  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  join   with  the  two 

^  Grossmann  derives  Chedi^  or  rather  ched  its  root,  from  cha^  when,  and 
id ;  this  gives  cka  a  meaning  almost  the  same  as  that  of  ka^  who. 

^  Grassmann  interprets  Bhallgsl  as  breaking  through,  just  as  the  Soma 
breaks  through  the  press  and  the  sieve.  It  only  occurs  once  in  the  Rigveda. 
Rigveda,  ix.  6i,  73,  where  Soma  is  called  Indu,  the  soul  of  life,  he  who 
breaks  through  {Okailgdm)  that  which  is  mixed  with  milk,  that  is,  the  Soma 
god  of  the  bull  race. 


ESSAY  II  71 

twins  of  Day  and  Night  in  making  the  car  and  pole  of  time 
revolve :  and  they  then  rose  in  the  air.  Ritu-parna  the  son 
of  Bhangasura,  the  divine  Soma,  dropped  his  garments,  the 
cloud  mantle  which  no  longer  covered  the  sky  at  the  close 
of  the  rainy  season,  but  would  not  stop  to  pick  it  up,  and  he 
stood  revealed  as  the  spirit  god,  the  germ  of  the  life  whose 
birth,  growth,  decay,  evanescence,  and  reproduction  are  all 
ordained  by  law.  He  taught  Nala  the  art  of  calculation  by 
reckoning dhe  number  of  leaves  and  fruits  on  the  Vibhitaka 
{Termifiolia  belerica)^  that  is,  the  science  of  foresight  ascer- 
tained by  observation,  correct  interpretation  and  memory. 
When  Nala  had  learnt  how  to  calculate  and  control  in  due 
order  the  times  and  seasons,  the  spirit  of  Kali  (the  black 
lawless  tempest)  went  out  of  him.  When  he  and  Ritu- 
parna  came  to  Bhima^s  court,  DamayantI  recognised  the 
rattle  of  the  car,  but  on  looking  for  Nala  only  saw  Ritu- 
parna  and  Varshneya.  She  sent  her  maid  Keshini  (she  with 
the  long  hair)  the  Valkyrs  of  the  North,  the  wind  goddess,  to 
look  for  him.  She,  on  coming  back,  told  her  how  Vahuka, 
Ritii-parn^^s  cook,  controlled  the  elements,  how  he  merely 
looked  on  vessels  to  fill  them  with  water,  that  on  going 
through  a  low  passage,  the  arch  rose  to  let  him  pass 
through,  how  he  set  fire  to  grass  by  holding  it  in  the  sun, 
and  how  flowers  pressed  by  him  grew  brighter  in  colour  and 
smelt  more  sweetly  than  before.^  DamayantI  then  sent  for 
Vahuka,  and  the  two  recognised  one  another.  They  then 
went  back  together  to  their  kingdom,  and  Nala,  by  the  arts 
of  calculation  and  control  he  had  learnt  from  Ritu-parna, 
won  back  his  kingdom  from  Pushkara,  the  gambler  of 
the  age  of  the  storm-god,  and  ruled  as  the  king  of  the 
regenerated   race,    who   looked   on   law   and   order  as   the 

^  This  tree  produces  the  Myrobolans  of  commerce,  and  is  called  in  the 
vernacular  Aijuna,  and  Arjuna  was  the  leader  of  the  reforming  Pandavas, 
and,  in  a  still  earlier  mythical  age  the  father  of  Kutsa,  the  priest-king  of  the 
gpd  Ka.     Rigveda,  viii.  i,  2,  vii.  19,  2. 

'  Vana  {Nolo  Pakhyana)  Parva,  Ixxiv,  Ixxv,  pp.  220-224. 


n    THE  RULIxNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

rightful  rulers  of  outward  nature  and  the  inward  moral 
world. 

We  see  in  this  story  an  excellent  specimen  of  mythic 
history,  for  it  not  only  tells  us,  as  the  earliest  myths  used  to 
do,  the  history  of  the  regular  order  of  the  changes  of  the 
Hindu  seasons,  but  also  gives  us  the  account  of  a  long  epoch 
in  Hindu  history.  As  a  Nature  myth,  it  tells  us  of  the 
mild  and  genial  spring,  the  burning  summer,  the  storms  of  the 
rainy  season,  the  harvests  of  autumn  gathered  at  the  court 
of  Ritu-parna,  the  return  of  the  sun  to  the  south-west  with 
the  north-east  winds  of  the  later  autumn  and  the  gathering 
of  the  winter  crops.  As  a  historical  myth,  it  tells  us  of  the 
rule  of  the  storm-god  in  the  West,  followed  by  that  of  the 
fire-worshipping  Maghadas  in  the  East ;  and  the  founding 
of  the  empire  of  the  Kushika,  the  race  who  united  the  East 
and  West  together  under  the  rule  of  the  sons  of  the  tortoise. 
They  were  the  people  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  divided 
the  year  first  into  three,  and  afterwards  into  five  seasons, 
who  were  led  by  the  twin  sons  of  Vivasvat,  who  were  first 
Day  and  Night,  and  were  afterwards  the  twin  stars  of 
Gemini,  and  who  reckoned  time  by  the  revolution  of  the 
weeks  and  fortnights  of  the  lunar  phases  depicted  in  the 
heavens  by  the  turning  of  the  celestial  pole  and  by  the 
successions  of  days  and  nights.  It  was  they  who  also  used 
the  apparent  motions  of  the  stars,  such  as  those  of  the  rising 
of  Sirius  and  the  culmination  of  Orion  to  mark  the  passage 
of  time ;  Sirius  by  its  rising  ushering  in  the  rains,  and 
Orion  by  his  culmination  marking  the  time  when  they  began 
to  become  less  violent. 

But  when  we  compare  this  story  with  that  in  the  Sanff  of 
Lingal^  which  tells  of  the  settlement  in  India  of  the  re- 
generated Gonds,  who  ploughed  land,  built  cities,  warred 
with  the  Magha  or  Magral,  the  alligator,  and  made  them- 
selves sons  of  the  tortoise,  we  find  that  the  Gond  poem, 
which  still  survives  in  its  original  pre- Aryan  tongue,  tells  us 
of  an  earlier  phase  of  the  same  age  of  the  Kushika  than  is 


ESSAY  II  73 

described  in  the  myth  of  Nala  and  Danmyanti.  The  Song 
qfLingal  in  this  section  of  the  story,  of  which  I  have  given 
the  outline  in  Essay  in.,  tells  how  Lingal  came  up,  like 
Nala,  from  the  South-west,  after  killing  the  snake,  who 
kept  back  the  rain,  another  form  of  the  gambler  Pushkara, 
and  how  he  was  borne  on  the  wings  of  the  storm-bird  to 
Mahadeo.  Mahadeo  then  released  from  the  mother-mountain, 
the  Gonds,  who  were  to  form  the  tortoise-race,  and  sent 
them  into  India  with  Lingal,  where  they  estabh'shed  their 
rule,  and  united  with  the  earlier  patriarchal  and  matriarchal 
Gonds,  whose  early  history  I  have  told  in  this  Essay.  It 
was  then  that  they  made  the  god  Pharsipen,  the  goddess 
(pen)  of  the  iron-trident  (phar&i)  or  year  of  three  seasons, 
inserted  into  the  female  bamboo,  and  consecrecated  by 
a  chain  of  bells  which  mark  the  passage  of  time ;  and 
I  have  shown  how  this  primitive  god  was  finally  raised  by 
the  same  investigating  race  to  heaven  as  the  god  of  the 
pole,  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  and  the  star 
Canopus,  bound  round,  and  made  to  revolve  by  the  necklace 
of  fourteen  stars  of  the  constellation  of  the  alligator  Draco, 
representing  the  lunar  phases  turned  by  the  stars  Gemini 
and  the  winds.  Thus,  in  the  Sonff  of* Lingal  and  the  story 
of  Nala  and  DamayantT,  we  find  a  mythical  sketch  of  the 
earlier  history  of  India  up  to  the  time  when  the  rule  of  the 
Kushika  race  was  thoroughly  consolidated,  and  their  stellar 
measurement  of  time  completed.  It  was  also  they  who,  as 
I  have  shown,  first  founded  the  ritual  of  the  Soma  sacri- 
fice to  the  rain-god,  and  made  the  rain,  the  Bhafigasura  or 
the  heavenly  Creator,  which  breaks  through  the  obstacles 
raised  by  the  god  of  the  burning  summer,  who  tries  to  keep 
it  back,  the  god  who  comes  to  create,  bringing  with  him  the 
Su,  or  soul  of  fresh  and  regenerated  life. 

But  I  have  now  to  proceed  in  the  course  of  mythic  history 
to  the  next  phase  of  the  myth  of  Nala,  ruined  and  l)eggared 
by  the  gambler  Pushkara,  and  this  we  find  in  the  history  of 
the  Pandavas,  which  forms  the  Mahabharata.     In  the  story 


74    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

of  Nala,  the  victors  over  evil  were  the  Kushika,  or  sons  of 
the  tortoise;  but  in  the  story  of  the  Mahabharata,  it  is  these 
same  sons  of  the  tortoise,  called  the  Kauravya  from  kiir^  the 
tortoise,  who  have  become  the  oppressors  and  evil-doers,  and 
the  Pandavas  are  those  who  deliver  the  land  from  their 
tyranny.  The  story  opens  with  the  account  of  how  the 
hundred  sons  of  Dhritarashtra,  the  Kauravya  king,  and  the 
five  Pandavas  were  brought  up  together  under  their  tutor 
Drona,  whose  name  denotes  the  Drona-kalasha  or  trough,  on 
which  the  sacrificial  Soma  was  made.  It  is  this  Drona-kalasha 
which  is  called  in  the  Brahmanas  Praja-pati,  the  supreme 
god.^  When  they  grew  up  they  disagreed,  and  the 
Kaiu-avyas  burnt  the  house  of  the  Pandavas,  and  forced 
them  to  leave  the  country.  They  fled  to  the  kingdom  of 
the  Gandharva  king,  Chitra-ratlia,  who  ruled  the  land  of 
Kichaka,  or  the  hill  bamlK)o  on  tlie  Ganges,  the  country  of 
the  Kushika  capital  in  the  story  of  Nala.  But  Chitra-ratha 
was,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  not  like  the  Ashvins,  the 
leader  of  a  race  who  believed  in  the  fixed  stars  as  the  main- 
tainers  of  law  and  order ;  but  he  and  his  people  had  learnt 
that  the  wandering  stars,  the  moon  and  the  planets,  which 
the  star-worshippers  denounced  as  rebels,  were  really  better 
measurers  of  time  than  the  stars,  and  it  was  thev  who  drew 
the  Chitra-ratha  or  variegated  (chitra)  chariots  {ratha)  of 
heaven.  He  introduced  them  to  Dhaumya,  the  son  of  smoke 
(dhumo)  who  instructed  them  in  the  new  ritual  of  temple- 
worship,  in  which  the  hidden  god  was  adored  in  the  inner  holy 
of  holies  amid  clouds  of  incense,  and  burnt  sacrifices  were 
offered  to  him  on  the  fire-altar  in  the  outer  court.  It  was 
under  the  guidance  of  Chitra-ratha  and  Dhaumya,  whom 
they  made  their  family  priest,  that  they  won  for  the  bride 
of  the  five  brothei-s,  DrupadI,  the  daughter  of  Drupada^ 
the  king  of  the  Paiichalas,  whose  name  means  the  sacrificial 
stake.  She,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  was  the  goddess  of  the 
altar  of  incense,  on  which  the  hidden  and  mysterious  god  of 

^  Eggeling,  Sa/,  Brdh.^  iv.  5,  5,  ii  ;  S.B.E.,  vol.  xxvi.  p.  408. 


ESSAY  II  75 

the  year  of  the  five  seasons  was  worshipped,  and  her  brother 
Drishta-dyumna,  the  seen  (drishta)  bright  one  {dyumiia\ 
who  wa6,  like  herself,  miraculously  born  by  the  sacrifice 
offered  by  the  Brahmin  Yaja,  meaning  the  sacrificer,  was 
both  the  altar  of  burnt  offering,  and  the  leader  of  the  Pan- 
(lavas  in  their  war  against  the  Kauravyas.  It  was  affcer  this 
marriage  that  the  Pandavas  began  their  career  of  conquest ; 
and  Bhima^  Arjuna,  Sahadeva,and  Nakula  conquered  all  India 
for  their  eldest  brother  Yudishthira.  He,  who  was  the  son 
of  the  god  Dharma,  the  god  of  law  and  order,  was  acknow- 
ledged as  supreme  ruler  by  all  the  Indian  princes,  including 
Dhritarashha  and  his  sons,  and  he  succeeded  Jarasandha,  the 
king  of  the  united  Kushikas  and  Maghadas,  who  had  been 
slain  by  Bhima,  the  god  worshipped  as  supreme  god  by  the 
Eastern  Gonds.  Yudishthira,  whose  name  means  he  who  has 
the  most  (of  the  spirit)  of  Yu,  that  is,  of  steadfastness,  was 
the  god  of  the  spring  of  the  new  and  regenerated  age ;  and 
he,  like  Nala,  ruled  his  kingdom  in  peace  and  righteousness, 
till  he  was  ensnared  by  Shakuna,  meaning  '  the  kite,**  the 
brother  of  Gandhari,  the  egg-laying  mother  of  the  Kaur- 
iivyas,  who  was,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  the  storm-bird, 
the  bird  of  the  burning  winds  of  summer.  Yudishthira 
lost  his  kingdom  to  him  at  the  gambling-table,  and  the 
Pajiijlavas  were  obliged  to  go  into  exile  for  thirteen  years, 
the  number  of  months  in  the  lunar  year.  This  time  of 
gambling  was  the  season  of  Bhima,  the  son  of  Vayu,  the 
wind,  and  of  the  burning  west  wind  of  summer.  The  next 
season,  which  begins  with  the  close  of  the  exile,  is  that  of 
Arjuna,  who,  with  the  god  Krishna  as  his  charioteer,  and 
Gan^iva,  the  heavenly  bow,  as  his  weapon,  is  the  foremost 
fighter  in  the  army  of  the  Pandavas  in  their  final  conflict 
with  the  Kauravyas.  He  is  the  god  of  the  rainy  season,  the 
son  of  Indra,  the  rain-god.  The  next  two  seasons — the 
autumn  and  winter — ^are  those  of  the  twins  Saha-deva  and 
Nakula,  the  sons  of  the  Ashvins,  and  they  represent  the  time 
of  the  thoughtful  consolidation  of  the  rule  of  Yudishthira, 


76    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

after  the  overthrow  of  the  Kauravyas  and  the  death  of  their 
leaders,  and  of  the  descent  of  the  throne  to  the  son  of 
Arjuna  and  Su-bhadra,  the  sister  of  Krishna.  Here,  even 
more  unmistakably  than  in  the  story  of  Nala,  we  find  a  his- 
torical myth  under  the  guise  of  an  account  of  the  sequence 
of  the  seasons,  and  we  are  told  of  the  rise  to  power  of  the 
Western  traders  and  warriors,  the  Sombunsi  or  sons  of  the 
moon ;  and  the  trading  Su-varna  or  Ikshvaku,  the  sons  of 
the  sugar-cane,  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  were  the  succes- 
sors of  the  growers  of  barley,  the  sons  of  the  twin-gods,  the 
Ashvins,  the  race  who  reckoned  time  by  the  lunar  year. 

As  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.  that  the  truth  of  this  mythic 
history  is  proved  by  the  Iiistorical  traditions  of  the  succes- 
sion of  races,  by  the  evolution  of  ritual,  and  by  the  deduc- 
tions to  be  made  from  tribal  customs,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  these  ancient  myths  are  not  mere  idle  tales  invented  to 
dissipate  the  tedium  of  an  uneventful  existence,  or  that 
their  authors  were  the  *  idle  singers  of  an  empty  day.**  On 
the  contrary,  they  were  the  pioneers  of  progress,  in  the  fore- 
front of  the  battle,  who  kept  not  only  the  records  of  past 
history  and  acquired  knowledge,  but  showed  the  way  to  new 
victories  over  ignorance  and  error.  It  was  by  means  of  these 
myths  that  they  recorded  and  preserved  the  history  of  the 
past,  which,  according  to  Renan''s  dictum,  every  race  which 
has  a  right  to  call  itself  an  individuality  among  human 
species  must  possess.^  It  was  these  myths  which,  before  the 
days  of  syllabic  or  alphabetical  literature,  were  made  and 
preserved  by  the  national  priesthood,  the  territorial  Ojhas 
or  Magas,  names  given  to  the  Sakadwipi,  Maithila,  and 
Gaura  Brahmins,^  of  Behar  and  Bengal,  to  the  exercisers 
and  chief  priests  both  of  the  Munda  parhas  or  provinces 
of  Chota  Nagpore,  and  to  the  Gond  priests  consecrated 
by  Lingal.      It   was  from    these    that   the    kings   selected 

^  Renan,  I^ei/ue  des  Deux  Mondes^  1st  Sept.  1873,  p.  140.      Quoted  by 
Lenormant,  Chaldivan  Magic,  p.  378. 

'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal j  vol.  i.  p.  159  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  138. 


ESSAY  II  77 

the   council    of  royal    priests  and    advisers,    who    became 
the  caste  of  the  Brahmins,  for  the  five  classes  of  the  Dravida 
Brahmins  living  south  of  the  Vindhyan  range,  and  the  five 
classes  of  Gaura  Brahmins  living  north  of  it,  are  all  distin- 
guished by  territorial  names  denoting  ancient  kingdoms  or 
ruling  centres.     Thus  the  Dravidas  are  divided  into  (1)  the 
Maharashtras,  who  belong  to  the  Maratha  country ;  (2)  the 
Andhras  or  Tailangas  to  the  Telugu ;  (3)  the  Dravidas  to 
the  Tamil ;  (4)  the  Kamatas  to  the  Carnatic ;  (5)  the  Gur- 
jaras  to  that  of  Gurjarashtra,  or  the  country  of  the  Gujarati 
language.      Similarly  the  Gaura  classes  are  (1)  the  Sara- 
swatas,  from  the  land  of  the  Sarasvati  river ;  (2)  the  Kanya- 
kubjas  from  Kanoj ;    (3)    the  Gauras,  from  Gaur   on  the 
Lower  Ganges ;  (4)  the  Utkalas,  of  Utkala  or  Orissa ;  and 
(5)  the  Maithilas,  from  Mithila  (Tirhut).  ^      It  was    they 
who   became  the  Asipu,  the  diviners  or  recorders  of  the 
Akkadians,  and  who  appear  in  Rome   as   the  College  of 
Augurs,  who  take  their  name  from  their  employment  as 
diviners  of  the  future  by  examining  omens,  especially  those 
taken  from  the  entrails  of  the  sacrificial  birds,  which,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  in.,  is  an  Eastern  cult,  taken  thither  from  the 
North,  and  derived  from  the  belief  in  birds  as  the  angel- 
messengers  of  the  unseen  god.     The  first  form  of  mythic 
history  accompanied  by  mythic  record  of  natural  phenomena 
was  that  which  is  shown  in  the  establishment  of  national 
festivals  to  mark  the  seasons,  and  it  was  on  the  earliest  altar 
to  the  mother-earth  that,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  a  hiero- 
gljrphic  picture  of  national  history  was  drawn.     Also  in  the 
festival  to  the  Fathers  the  great   epochs  of  change  were 
marked  in  the  offerings  of  rice  to  the  oldest  Fathers,  the 
Pitarah  Somavantah,  of  parched  barley  to  the  Pitaro  Baris- 
hadah,  or  the  Fathers  of  the  Kushite  race,  sitting  on  the 
Barhis,  or  sacred  Kusha  grass  round  the  altar,  who  are  the 
Fathers  of  the  age  of  the  Nala  myth,  and  of  porridge  made 
of  parched   barley   and   the   milk   of  a   cow   suckling    an 

*  Risley,  Tribes  ami  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  i.  pp.  143,  144. 


78    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

adopted  calf,  offered  to  the  Pitaro  ''Gnishvattah,  or  those 
who  burned  their  dead/  the  later  Aryans,  whose  history  I 
have  not  yet  reached.  In  these  divisions  we  trace,  as  I  have 
already  done  by  tribal  traditions,  the  progress  of  cultivation, 
and  the  growth  of  Indian  agriculture  from  the  South  ;  for  the 
rice  offered  to  the  Pitarah  Somavantah  on  six  potsherds  is  an 
offering  to  the  six  seasons  into  which  the  equatorial  year  of 
Southern  India  is  divided,  owing  to  the  alternation  of 
periods  of  wet  and  dry  weather,  each  lasting  two  months. 
This,  in  spite  of  the  official  sanction  given  by  the  framers  of 
ritual  to  the  three  seasons  of  the  Chatur  masiya,  the  division 
of  the  year  of  the  Northern  races,  and  the  five  seasons  of  the 
Gonds  and  of  the  lunar  sacrifices,  is  recognised  in  the  Brah- 
manas  as  the  true  division  of  the  vear.^  Also  Hindu  astrono- 
mers  divide  the  year  into  six  r?7w,  and  it  was  this  number 
of  six  seasons  which  was  the  number  made  sacred  to  the 
Asura,  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  derive  their  name  from 
the  Akkadian  Ash  (six). 

But  when  national  education  was  looked  on,  as  it  was 
amongst  the  Kushites  as  one  of  the  most  important  tasks  or 
internal  policy,  it  was  found  necessary  to  improve  and  dis- 
seminate, more  widely  than  had  hitherto  been  done,  the 
knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  country  and  of  the  results 
acquired  by  scientific  research,  and  these  were  all  embodied 
in  myths  framed  on  the  model  of  the  seasonal  myths  which 
formed  the  folk-tales  of  the  villagers,  these  being  almost  all 
based  on  the  recurrence  of  the  seasons,  the  most  important 
subject  of  knowledge  to  a  people  whose  living  was  gained  by 
the  culture  of  plants,  which  could  only  be  properly  carried 
on  when  the  land  was  prepared,  the  seed  sown,  the  fields 
weeded,  and  the  crops  reaped  and  stored  in  the  proper 
seasons.  It  is  the  story  of  the  seasons  which  is  told  in  the 
numerous  stories  of  the  three   brothers,   the  youngest   of 

^  Eggeling*s  ^a/.  Brah,  ii.  6,  i,  4-7,  S.B.E.,  vol.  xii.,  p.  421. 
*  y^iV/.,  ii.   I,  I,  13,  S.B.E.,  vol.  xii.  p.  281  ;  iii.  4,  3,  17  ;  iv.  2,  2,  7,  vol. 
xxvi.  pp.  1 01 1  289. 


ESSAY  II  79 

whom,  the  reaper  of  the  han-est,  is  alone  successful  in  his 
quest ;  and  it  is  they  which  appear  in  the  Cinderella  myth 
and  its  variants,  where  the  Prince,  the  young  god  of  the  new 
year,  is  won  and  wedded  by  Cinderella,  the  despised  winter 
scrub,  who  defeats  her  gaudier  sisters,  the  spring  and 
summer,  and  leaves  her  glass  shoe  of  winter  ice  as  the  sign 
by  which  she  is  to  be  found  by  those  who  know  her  worth. 
It  is  this  mythical  method  of  recording  the  movements  of 
time  which  appears  also  in  the  story  of  the  Briar  Rose  or 
Sleeping  Beauty.  It  is  she  who  is  the  year-goddess  wakened 
from  her  winter  sleep  by  the  kiss  of  spring,  and  her  previous 
history  shows  that  it  is  a  story  which  has  travelled  from  the 
South  to  the  North,  and  has  taken  with  it  in  its  progress  a 
record  of  the  varying  methods  used  for  calculating  annual 
time.  Her  fairy  god-mothers  are  thirteen,  a  number  repre- 
senting the  thirteen  months  of  the  lunar  year.  But  one  of 
the  golden  plates  allotted  to  them  was  taken  away,  and  only 
twelve  remained  at  her  christening  to  denote  the  twelve 
months  of  the  newer  solar  year  which  succeeded  the  lunar. 
Consequently  the  thirteenth  god-mother,  the  discarded 
month,  was  angry,  and  came  in  after  the  first  eleven  god- 
mothers had  given  their  gifts  to  deciee  that  the  new-bom 
year  princess  should  prick  herself  with  a  spindle  on  her 
fifteenth  birthday.  In  these  numbers  we  have  a  mythical 
record  of  the  eleven  months  of  generation  sacred  to  the 
worshippers  of  the  Ashvins,  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii., 
underlie  the  whole  mythical  chronometry  of  the  Rigveda, 
and  of  the  ten  lunar  months  of  gestation,  and  the  five  seasons 
which  marked  the  year  of  the  Kushika  races. 

It  is  these  sacred  numbers,  the  seven  days  of  the  week, 
the  six,  five,  three  seasons,  the  number  eight,  sacred  to  the 
fire-god,  the  gods  of  earth,  and  nine  sacred  to  the  gods  of 
heaven  ;  the  ten  and  eleven  months  of  gestation  and  genera- 
tion, the  thirteen  months  of  the  lunar,  the  twelve  months  of 
the  solar  year,  the  fourteen  days  of  the  lunar  phases,  and 
twenty-eight   of  the   lunar   month,   the   twenty-six  lunar 


80    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

phases  of  the  hinar  yearjand  the  thirty-tliree  lords  of  the  ritual 
order  of  the  Zendavesta,  Rigveda,  and  Egyptian  mythology, 
and  other  similar  numbei*s,  which  form  a  most  important 
part  of  the  teachings  of  ancient  myths.  These  were  the 
algebraic  signs  of  calculation  and  record  which  were  taught 
by  Ritupama  to  Nala,  and  it  is  these  which,  in  the  absence 
of  significant  names,  as  in  the  story  of  the  Sleeping  Beauty, 
frequently  show  the  meaning  and  history  of  the  mythic 
tale.  But  it  is  in  the  names  that  we  find  the  surest  guide 
where  the  story  gives  them  in  their  original  form,  or  when 
we  can  trace  their  meaning  and  origin  either  by  linguistic 
laws,  or  else  by  the  fathful  translation  of  these  earlier  names 
into  the  tongue  of  those  who  have  adopted  the  myth  ;  and 
it  is  by  this  means  that  we  can  work  out  most  of  the  mean- 
ings of  the  earlier  Dravidian  and  Turanian  myths  preserved 
by  Sanskrit  authors,  and  many  of  those  which  have  found 
their  way  into  Greek  mythology.  The  names  in  these 
stories  are  never  those  of  individuals,  who  were  of  little 
account  in  pre- Aryan  days,  the  naming  of  individuals  being 
always  thought  to  be  unlucky  ;  but  are  always  especially 
selected  as  the  best  means  which  suggested  itself  to  these 
authors  of  conveying  to  and  impressing  on  the  memory  of 
those  who  learnt  the  myth  the  meaning  of  the  lessons  they 
wished  to  teach.  It  is  tales  like  these  which  have  always 
been  from  time  immemorial  the  favourite  methods  of  teach- 
ing among  all  the  races  who  have  successively  ruled  India. 
It  is  Sanskrit  fairy  tales  which  form  the  substratum  of  many 
of  our  European  stories ;  and  no  one  who  has  heard,  as  I  have 
done,  the  fairy  stories  of  my  youth  told  by  a  wild  Gond  in 
the  forests  of  Sehawa,  at  the  sources  of  the  Mahanuddi  in 
Chuttisgurh,  can  ever  doubt  that  these  stories  were  originally 
conceived  by  the  myth-makers  of  the  most  primitive  tribes 
in  the  earliest  dawn  of  civilisation.  The  stories  my  Gond 
guide  told  me  could  never  have  reached  his  tribe  from 
Northern  infiltration  in  historic  times,  for  I  was  probably 
the  second,  if  not  the  first,  European  he  or  his  people  had 


ESSAV  II  81 

ever  seen ;  for,  as  far  as  I  could  make  out,  I  was  the  second 
European  who  was  ever  known  to  have  visited  this  wild  and 
remote  tract.  The  stories  collected  and  published  from 
Southern  India  by  the  Misses  Frere  in  Old  Deccan  Days^ 
and  by  Miss  Stokes,  prove  conclusively  that  the  art  of 
making  myths  was  well  known  to  the  Southern  Dravidians. 
It  was  apparently  these  people  who  first  formed  the  skeleton 
foundations  on  which  later  stories  were  founded,  and  being 
a  most  practical  people,  they  made  them  in  such  a  way  as 
to  convey  valuable  instruction  in  an  interesting  and  easily 
retained  form.  Having — like  all  nations  with  strong  Malay 
affinities,  such  as  the  Chinese,  Burmese,  and  Bengalis — vivid 
dramatic  instincts,  and  being  also,  like  the  Bengalis,  great 
makers  of  pithy  proverbs,  they  easily  and  naturally  turned 
these  into  stories  which  seemed  to  be  tales  told  of  indi- 
viduals, and  in  dramatising  these,  either  in  the  story  or  in 
mimic  action,  they  made  the  key-notes  of  the  proverbs  the 
names  of  the  actors  in  the  plot.  When  these  stories  were 
transferred  from  the  village-school  and  the  village  meetings 
in  the  Akra  or  dancing-place  to  the  guardianship  of  the 
royal  advisers,  and  were  made  the  groundwork  of  national 
history,  they  were  protected  from  alteration  by  the  same 
tcJboo  which  forbade  all  tampering  with  the  national 
ritual.  They  were  divinely-inspired  tales,  which  must  be 
handed  down  by  the  rulers  of  the  priestly  guilds  from 
generation  to  generation,  each  only  adding  its  own  contribu- 
tion to  the  story  transmitted  by  their  predecessors.  This 
task  of  guarding  and  adding  to  the  national,  historical,  and 
scientific  myths  was  that  which  was  confided  to  the  priests 
called  Prashastri,  or  the  teaching  priest,  a  name  given  to 
Agni,  the  fire-god,  in  the  Rigveda,^  and  the  title  by  which 
the  priests,  called  in  the  later  ritual  Mitra-Varuna,  were  first 
named.  They  are  the  special  priests  of  the  Udumbara  or 
house-pole  of  the  Sadas,  or  house  of  the  gods  in  the  Soma- 
sacrifice,  for  it  is  close  to  it  that  their  dhishnya  or  hearth 

*  Rigveda,  i.  93,  6. 

6 


82    THE  RULING  llACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

is  placed  in  the  Soma  sacrificial  ground,^  and  it  was  they 
who  preserved  the  remembrance  of  the  ancient  meanings,  and 
of  the  rules  made  for  the  guidance  of  those  who  framed  the 
new  myths  of  each  successive  generation.  It  was  this 
method  of  making  mythic  history  which  held  its  ground  as 
that  best  adapted  for  popular  use  to  a  time  long  after  the 
introduction  of  syllabic  writing  and  alphabets ;  and  it  is 
upon  the  national  myths  that  all  the  great  epic  poems  of 
India,  Assyria,  and  Greece  are  founded ;  and  it  is  these 
myths  which  appear  in  the  history  of  the  birth,  education, 
and  lives  of  the  national  gods  and  reformers,  such  as  Apollo 
and  Buddha.  Though  the  latter  was  a  living  man,  and  not 
a  name  born  from  the  thought  of  the  myth-maker,  yet  the 
stories  of  his  birth  and  education,  and  of  many  incidents  of 
his  life  are  altered  from  the  real  facts  by  mythic  elements 
introduced  to  do  honour  to  the  saint,  and  taken  from  myths 
first  made  by  the  official  myth-makers  in  the  days  when 
myths  recorded  real  history,  and  when  these  myths  told  the 
story  of  national  changes.  Thus  these  myths  are  of  quite  a 
different  class  from  the  originals  from  which  they  were 
taken,  and  merely  represent  the  reverence  felt  by  the  writer, 
just  as  the  pictured  aureole  denotes  the  feeling  inspired  by 
the  divine  being  it  illumines.  In  interpreting  the  inspired 
myths  of  the  early  teachers,  it  may  be  laid  down  as  an  in- 
variable rule  that  any  attempt  to  treat  them,  whether  they 
are  historical,  religio-historical  or  naturalistic,  as  stories  told 
of  individuals,  must  be  utterly  wrong,  and  that  no  true  solu- 
tion of  a  myth  can  be  found  till  the  meaning  of  the  names  as 
understood  by  the  original  myth-maker  is  unravelled,  and 
that  of  the  numbers  ascertained. 

It  must  also  be  remembered  that  these  myths  were  not 
merely  local  tales  current  only  in  certain  places,  but  that 
they  travelled  with  the  tribes  who  framed  them,  and  thus 
give  most  valuable  evidence  of  their  movements  and  national 
growth.      An  excellent   specimen    of  the  travelling  myth, 

^  See  plan  of  ground  in  Eggeling's  Saf.  BrdA.,  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi. 


ESSAY  II  83 

which  shows  the  great  antiquity  of  these  national  stories  is 
to  be  found  in  that  of  Ixion  and  its  variants,  which  ranges 
from  Asia  Minor  to  Greece  on  one  side,  and  India  on  the 
other.  Ixion  and  his  sister  Koronis  were  the  children  of 
Phlegyas,  king  of  the  Phlegyes,  the  people  whose  name 
appears  in  that  of  the  Indian  Bhrigus,  the  race  who  brought 
fire  to  earth.  Their  original  home  was  in  Phrygia,  which 
means  the  land  of  the  Phruges,  Bruges,  by  which  last  name 
they  were  known  in  Thrace,  or  Bhrigus.  They  were  origin- 
ally called  Peru-gu,  or  the  begetters,  and  were  a  Finnic 
race,  whose  fire-god  was  Peru,  and  whose  name  means,  in 
Finnish  and  Tamil,  the  begetter.  The  p  became  in 
Aryan  speech  M,  and  the  root  pri-u  became  the  Aryan 
root  bhri,  to  beget.^  Tlie  name  Ixion,  as  Kuhn  and  Breal 
have  proved,  represents  an  earlier  Greek  form,  I^a-F-oi/, 
and  this  is  the  same  word  as  the  Sanskrit  Akshivan,  the 
driver  of  the  axle  (aksha).  ^  But  Ixion  is  also,  according  to 
Bopp  and  Pott,  connected  with  the  root  /A*,  pouring  water, 
which  appears  in  Ichor  (I^^w/j),  the  blood  of  the  gods,  the 
water  of  life.  Moreover,  the  Sanskrit  aksha  is  a  word  of 
which  the  original  is  to  be  found  in  the  Gond  akkha,  an 
axle  ;  and  the  cart-axle,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  is  Avorshipped 
by  the  Gonds  at  their  annual  new  yearns  festival  of  the 
Akh-tuj  (which  takes  place  in  April,  and  is  a  festival  to  the 
rain-god  to  secure  good  rains,  whence  the  Soma  sacrifice 
probably  originated).  The  Gonds  belong  to  the  Turanian 
race,  who  are  the  sons  of  tlie  god  (a7Ui)  Tur,  the  pole ;  and 
the  first  father-pole  was  the  fire-drill,  who,  with  his  consort, 
the  socket,  were  the  first  ])air  of  twin-gods  who  appear  in 
the  Hindu  ritual  of  the  Soma  sacrifice  as  Puru-ravas  and 
Urvashi,'^  and  whose  story  I  have  told  in  Essay  iii.  The 
Hindu  Puru-ravas,  before   he  became   the  Eastern  (piiru) 

^  This  deduction  is,  for  the  reasons  stated  in  Essay  i.,p.  37,  prol^ably 
wrong,  as  I  there  show  the  primarj'  fomi  was  most  likely  d/in\  and  the 
derivative  pri-u, 

*  Mannhardt,  Wald  und  Feld  Kultur^  vol.  ii.  chap.  iii.  p.  84,  note  i. 

*  Eggeling's  Sat,  Brdh,  iii.  1.  i,  22  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  91. 


i 


84    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

roarer  (ravas)^  and  the  thunder-god,  was  the  counterpart  of 
the  Greek  king  Phlegyas,  the  god  of  the  earthly  fire ;  and 
his  children,  Ixion  and  Koronis,  are  a  second  pair  of  twin- 
gods,  who  reproduce  their  parents  under  another  guise.  For 
Ixion  is  the  god  who  on  earth  wedded  Dia,  the  bright  flame, 
the  daughter  of  Dioneus,  who  was  enticed  by  Ixion  into  a  pit 
filled  with  burning  fire-brands,  and  thus  slain.  Thus  Ixion 
was  the  god  to  whom  burnt-sacrifices  were  oflTered  in  the 
sacrificial  pit,  the  Hindu  gurta^  one  of  which  has  been 
found  in  the  temple  of  the  Kabiroi,  in  Samothrace,^  and 
which  was  first  sacred  to  the  god  whose  victims  were  tied  by 
the  neck  to  the  sacrificial  stake  in  the  pit  and  slain,  so  that 
their  blood  vitalised  it  and  the  mother  earth.  These  burnt- 
sacrifices  of  the  fire- worshippers  were  the  only  sacrifices 
offered  in  the  Ismenion  at  Thebes;  and  at  these,  predic- 
tions of  future  events  were  not  given  by  oracles  as  at  Delphi, 
but  by  omens  drawn  by  the  priests  from  the  flames  and 
ashes  of  the  sacrifice,  and  they  still  survived  at  Delphi  in 
the  ritual,  and  predictions  of  the  priests  called  Purkooi 
(7rvp-K6oL\  who  oflTered  sacrifices  to  the  fire-god  (Trvp). 
By  Dia,  Ixion  was  the  father  of  Pirithous,  who,  like  Ayu, 
the  son  of  Puru-ravas  and  Urvashi,  was  the  revolving  pole 
of  time  descended  from  the  sacrificial  stake.  Ixion,  when 
raised  to  heaven,  was  the  rain-god  who  turned  one  wheel,  to 
which  his  hands  and  feet  were  fixed  by  Hermes,  the  fire-god, 
continuously  in  the  air,  and  this  is  merely  a  mythic  way  of 
saying  that  he  was  the  fire-drill  made  as  the  revolving  pole 
to  rotate  perpetually,  and  by  being  turned  to  every  side 
in  his  winged  course  ^  to  produce  life-giving  heat,  the  gene- 
rator of  rain.  This  pole  was  the  Great  Bear,  the  father 
constellation,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  of  the  Finns,  the  sons 
of  the  Bear,  marking,  by  its  seven  stars,  the  seven  days  of 
the  week,  the  revolutions  of  the  wheel  of  time.     This  was  the 

*  Schuchhardt's  Schliemann's  Excavations,  p.  io8. 

*  Pindar,  Pyth,  ii.  40,  describes  Ixion's  wheel  as  ei)  irrepdeirn  rpox^  TrdvTa 
Kv\ivd6fi€yoy. 


ESSAY  II  85 

constellation  of  the  axle,  which  was  afterwards,  in  one  of  its 
many  transformations,  called  Charles'*s  Wain.  Ixion  as  the 
Bear-god,  the  ruler  of  the  weeks  or  the  revolving-axle,  was 
by  Nephele,  the  cloud,  the  father  of  the  Centaurs,  who,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  ui.,  were  the  time-gods  who  goaded  (xepreco) 
the  bull  who  made  the  pole  of  time  go  round.  These 
mythological  conceptions  prove  that  the  original  axle  which 
Ixion  represented  was  not  the  axle  of  the  two-wheeled  cart, 
but  that  of  the  single  revolving  pole.  But  to  understand 
the  full  meaning  and  genealogy  of  the  Ixion  myth,  we  must 
turn  to  that  of  Koronis,  his  twin-sister.  Her  name  means 
the  garland,  the  necklace  of  flowers  which  every  Hindu 
presents  to  honoured  friends  on  festive  occasions,  an  emblem 
of  the  annual  garland  of  flowers  made  by  those  blossoming 
in  each  month  of  spring,  summer,  and  autumn.  She  was,  by 
Is-chus  an  Arcadian,  the  mother  of  iEsculapius,  the  physi- 
cian to  the  gods ;  and  the  name  Is-chus  or  Ais-chus  becomes 
in  Sanskrit,  by  the  softening  of  the  guttural  Ishd^  a  beam  or 
pole,  the  pole  of  the  axle  of  the  cart ;  but  this,  when  attached 
to  the  revolving  pole,  is  the  beam  or  cross-bar  which  makes 
it,  like  the  cross-bar  of  the  fire-drill,  go  round.  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  in.  that  in  the  first  age  of  astronomical  mythology 
the  heavenly  pole  turning  in  the  cloud-socket,  as  Ixion''s 
wheel  revolved  in  the  air  was,  in  the  Vayu  Purana  likened  to 
the  pole  or  axle  of  the  oil-press  turned  by  the  beam  which 
is  fixed  to  it ;  and  in  the  myth  of  Koronis  we  find  Is-chus, 
the  beam  or  moving  time,  causing  the  revolutions  which 
produce  the  seed  whence  the  physician  of  the  gods  was  born  ; 
and  that  this  seed,  the  oftspring  of  the  flower-mother,  pro- 
duced by  the  oil-press,  was  the  oil  of  life,  we  see  more  clearly 
in  the  myth  of  Athene.  She  is  the  flower-mother,  whose 
name  comes  from  the  same  root  as  anthos^  a  flower;  and 
her  mother-tree  was  the  olive  or  oil-tree,  born,  like  the  fire- 
god,  in  Asia  Minor,  and  thus  we  find  in  these  two  myths, 
two  flower-mothers,  one  whose  son'*s  father  is  the  beam  of  the 
oil-press,  and  another  whose  mother-tree  is  the  olive  or  oil- 


86    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tree.  It  was  the  olive-tree  of  Athene,  which,  with  the  pahii, 
the  Babylonian  tree  of  life,  overshadowed  Leto  at  the  birth 
of  the  second  avatar  of  Apollo  and  Artemis  at  Delos ;  and 
they  were,  like  Ixion  and  Koronis,  mythological  reproduc- 
tions, as  I  show  presently,  of  the  fire-drill  and  the  socket. 
By  this  analysis  we  see  that  in  the  myths  of  Ixion  revolving 
in  Nephele  the  cloud,  and  of  Ischus,  the  beam  begetting  the 
physician  of  the  gods  from  the  flower- mother,  it  is  the 
pole  which  is  turned,  and  that  the  turning  instrument  is 
symbolised  in  the  beam  of  the  oil-press ;  for  in  the  myth  of 
Ixion  it  is  the  Ichor  or  blood  of  the  gods,  the  life-giving 
rain,  which  he  distils  from  the  cloud  ;  and  in  that  of  Koronis 
the  yearly  garland  made  from  the  encircling  round  of  flowers 
changing  with  every  season,  it  is  the  healing  medicine  of  the 
divine  physician  which  is  the  offspring  of  the  heavenly  oil- 
press.  To  understand  the  sanctity  and  medicinal  value 
attached  to  oil  we  must  go  to  India,  where  every  Hindu 
child  is  anointed  with  oil  almost  as  soon  as  it  is  born ;  and 
every  one,  both  men  and  women,  anoint  themselves  with  oil 
as  a  medicinal  precaution  against  disease,  and  it  is  also  used 
for  ceremonial  purposes.  The  most  sacred  oil  is  that  pressed 
from  the  Sesamum  plant  called  Til  {Sesamum  Orientale\ 
and  this,  in  the  ethics  of  the  Teli  caste  of  hereditiiry  oil- 
pressers,  is  the  only  oil  which  pure  Telis  can  make,  and 
those  who  extracted  other  oils  are  thought  to  belong  to 
what  are  the  less  reputable  sections  of  the  tribe.  The  Til 
is  the  oil-plant  most  universally  grown  in  India,  and 
generally  that  sown  on  newly-cleared  uplands  possessing  a 
light  soil,  as  it  does  not  require  so  rich  a  soil  as  the  ciistor- 
oil  plant.  The  priests  of  the  Behar  Telis  are  the  Dosadhs, 
the  priests  of  the  fire-god ;  and  an  inferior  class  of  Brah- 
mins called  the  Tel-Babhun,  and  their  chief  deities  are  the 
five  village  gods,  the  Pafich  Pir,  the  five  seasons  of  the 
Gonds,  and  Goraya,  the  boundary-god,  to  whom  the 
Dosadhs  sacrifice  pigs.^     Their  mother- tree,  on  which   the 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  ii.  pp.  308-309. 


ESSAY  II  87 

bridegroom  sits  while  the  bride  is  carried  round  him,  is  the 
Cliumpa-tree  {Liiiod^ndron  grandiflora  or  lilifera)  and 
Chumpa-flowers  are  those  most  prizxxl  for  sacred  garlands. 
It  is  these  that  are  reproduced  in  the  name  of  the  Greek 
flower-mother  Koronis.  The  Telis  form  one  of  the  earliest 
trade-guilds,  which  became,  under  Kushite  rule,  separate 
castes,  and  many  of  the  wciilthiest  traders  of  India  are  Telis, 
while  the  Teli  or  oilman  is  to  be  found  in  almost  every 
village  where  there  are  any  Hindu  residents.  They  are 
proved  by  their  totems,  among  which  are  the  Niiga 
snake,  the  tortoise,  and  the  Bar-harua,  or  fruit  of  the  Harua- 
tree,^  to  he  the  yellow  sons  of  the  tortoise-worship])ers 
of  the  Niiga-snake,  for  it  is  from  the  galls  of  the  llarua-tree 
{Myrabolana  chebida)  that  the  most  durable  yellow  dye  is 
made.*  Their  descent  from  the  yellow  race  is  confirmed  by 
the  tribal  legend  that  the  two  first  oil-makers  were  made  by 
the  goddess  Bhagavati  out  of  turmeric  or  yellow  paste,  and 
by  the  fact  that  the  purest  Telis  are  called  the  Ekadiis,  or 
worshippers  of  the  eleven  gods  of  the  Ashvins,  or  fathers  of 
the  yellow  race.  The  Telis  are  said  in  the  Brahma  Vai- 
vartta  Purana  to  be  eleventh  in  the  list  of  castes,  and  to  be 
boni  from  the  Kumhar  or  potter,  and  the  builder  caste, 
Kotak  or  Gharami,  from  whom  the  ideas  of  the  revolving 
wheel  and  the  revolving  measuring-pole  were  derived.^ 
Their  descent  from  the  Naga  snake  and  pole  is  also  repro- 
duced in  the  Greek  ^Esculapius,  who  bears  a  staff  round 
which  a  snake  is  twined,  and  it  was  to  him  that  the  cock, 
the  sacred  bird  of  the  East,  brought  to  Greece  with  the 
legends  of  the  heavenly  twins,  the  egg-born  children,  was 
sacrificed.  He  was  also  one  of  the  avatars  of  Apollo, 
who  became  Apollo  Paian,  or  the  healing  Apollo,  in  whose 
honour  the  Gynmopa»dia,  or  dance  of  naked  boys  accom- 
panied by  the  pjean,  was  performed,  just  as  theGonds  always 

^  Kislcy,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  Appendix  i.  p.  138. 

-  Clarke's  Roxburgh's  Flora  Indica,  p.  381. 

3  Rislcy,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  pp.  306-309. 


88    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

appeared  naked  before  their  supreme  Naga-god,  Sek  Nag. 
It  is  by  this  transformation  that  we  find  that  the  myth  of 
Ixion  is .  exactly  parallel  with  that  of  Apollo ;  for  as  Ixion 
became  the  rain-god  after  he  had  been  the  fire-god,  so  did 
Apollo  become  the  storm-god,  the  lord  of  heaven,  bom  on 
the  river  Xanthus  after  he  had  slain  the  one-eyed  Cyclops, 
the  fire-god,  whose  eye  is  the  spark  in  the  fire-drill.  It  was 
to  expiate  this  oflence  that  he  had  to  do  penance  for  nine 
years  with  Admetus,^  whose  name  means  *  the  untamed,**  and 
signifies  the  hidden  fire  imprisoned  below  the  earth.  It  was 
on  emerging  from  this  imprisonment  that  he  was  born  as  the 
god  of  heaven,  whose  sacred  number  is  nine.  This  interpre- 
tation is  confirmed  by  the  legend  of  the  Titans.  In  it  the 
Cyclops  or  fire-gods  were  the  rulers  of  heaven,  under  Gaia 
the  earth-mother,  and  they  were  thrown  into  Tartarus,  that 
is,  imprisoned  below  the  earth  as  the  volcanic  fires  by 
Ouranos  the  god  of  heaven,  the  Sanskrit  Varuna ;  and  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  iii.  that  the  twins  Artemis  and  Apollo, 
born  on  the  river  Xanthus  at  the  first  avatar  of  Apollo  as 
a  twin  god,  were  the  Hindu  gods  Mi tra- Varuna,  the  moon 
and  the  rain  (var)  god.  It  is  this  mythology  which,  in 
the  legends  of  Ixion  and  Koronis,  and  of  the  Hindu  axle 
and  pole,  we  identify  as  identical  with  that  disseminated  in 
India  by  the  flower-loving  yellow  race,  who,  as  Ooraons  wear 
flowers  in  their  hair,  and  as  oil-pressers  call  themselves  Telis 
in  India,  and  who  became  in  Greece  the  children  of  Koronis 
the  flower-goddess,  and  of  the  oil-press,  the  father  of  the 
race  of  physicians,  the  sons  of  the  Hindu  Ashvins  or 
physicians  of  the  gods.  They  first  used  oil  as  the  great 
healer  and  strengthener  of  the  body,  and  the  stand-by  of 
those  who  trained  combatants  for  the  Greek  palaestra.  We 
find  also  that  the  oil-growers  were  an  offshoot  of  the 
Turanian  race,  who  were  sons  of  the  pole,  and  made  the 
Naga  or  rain-snake  their  chief  god  in  place  of  the  fire-god. 
It  was  they  who  used  oil  or  butter  and  water  for  cleansing 

^  Smith's  Classical  Dictionary^  s.v.  Admetus. 


ESSAY  II  89 

and  sanctifying  purposes,  in  preference  to  the  blood  used  by 
their  predecessors,  and  it  was  these  same  people  who,  when 
they  had  evolved  the  idea  of  the  god  of  heaven  as  the  pole 
turned  by  the  revolving  days  and  weeks,  symbolised  it  as  the 
pole  of  the  threshing-floors,  round  which  the  kcntauroi  or 
goaders  {icevr)  of  the  ox  {ravpo^)  drive  the  ox  which  treads 
out  the  com,  and  thus  makes  the  tribes  of  Gonds,  whose 
successive  races  are  called  in  the  Song  of  Lingal  '  the 
threshing-floor  of  Gonds.^  We  thus  see  how  the  same  pri- 
mitive conceptions  accompanied  the  Turanian  race  in  their 
emigrations  from  Phrygia  to  Greece  and  India,  and  how  the 
myth  expanded  with  the  growth  of  the  nation.  But  as  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  in.  these  people,  while  believing  in  the 
rain-god  as  the  supreme  god  and  father  of  life,  also  thought 
that  drunkenness  was  divine  inspiration ;  and  while  the 
Northern  Turanians  consumed  at  their  festivals  quantities 
of  mead  or  honey  drinks,  the  Gonds  drank  darw,  a  spirit 
made  from  the  flowers  of  the  Mahua-tree  {Bassia  latifblm). 
This  was  thought  to  contain  the  essence  of  life  distilled 
from  the  rain  into  the  flowers,  and  thence  in  Northern  mytho- 
logy extracted  by  the  prophetic  or  inspired  bees,  and  thus 
the  flower-mother  and  the  bees  were  the  mothers  of  wisdom 
and  divine  ecstasy,  who  inspired  their  priests  with  a  know- 
ledge of  diseases  and  the  means  of  curing  them  ;  and  it  was 
these  people  who  added  the  healing-oil  to  the  pharmacopoeia 
of  the  medicine-men  of  the  fire-worshippers.  The  descent 
from  the  rain-god  of  the  intoxicating  spirit  made  from  the 
flowers  of  the  Mahua-tree  is  symbolised  in  the  ceremonies  of 
the  Vajapeya  sacrifice,  described  in  Essay  in.  For  the  Soma 
priest,  the  Adhvaryu,  consecrates  the  cups  of  pure  and  unin- 
toxicating  Soma  above  the  axle  of  the  Soma  cart  at  the 
same  time  as  the  Neshtri  priest  of  Tvashtar  consecrates 
those  of  Sura,  or  spirits,  below  it,  and  in  this  ceremony  we 
see  the  reminiscence  of  the  days  when  the  axle  was  the 
upright  revolving  pole  pressing  out  the  heavenly  rain  which 
instilled  into  the  flowers  the  spirit  of  life  which  they  repro- 


"^•l 
t 


90    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

duced  in  the  life-giving  Sura.  This  also  shows  us  how  it  was 
that  the  axle  became  the  sacred  part  of  the  Soma  cart  when  the 
planets  and  moon  circling  the  heavens  became  the  measurers 
of  time  in  place  of  the  fixed  stars,  and  the  revolving  pole 
became  the  axle  of  the  car  of  time,  and  of  the  cart  of  the  agri- 
cultural Gonds,  who  worship  its  axle  at  the  Akh-tuj  festival. 
It  was  tliese  successively  immigrating  races  from  the  North 
whose  mythic  history,  together  with  that  of  the  matriarchal 
tribes  who  preceded  them,  is  told  in  the  myths  I  have  cited 
in  this  Essay  and  in  Essay  in.,  and  it  was  they  who  placed  a 
king  at  the  head  of  the  confederated  provinces,  formed  from 
their  confederated  villages  by  the  matriarchal  tribes.  The 
first  great  immigration  after  that  of  the  North-eastern  Mons 
or  Mundas,  was  that  of  the  sons  of  the  dog  and  boar-god, 
who  formed  the  race  of  the  Maghadas,  represented  in  Bengal 
by  the  Dosadhs  and  Rauris,  who  reverence  the  dog  and  pig 
and  their  congeners ;  and  it  was  they  who  made  the  tribal 
medicine-man,  the  Byga,  into  the  village  priest  under  the 
name  of  Dosadhs,  Degharia,  Deoris,  etc.  The  confederate 
form  of  these  kingdoms  is  shown  in  such  names  as  Chuttis- 
gurh,  wliich  means  the  thirty-six  gurhs,  or  united  provinces. 
Rut  the  final  consolidated  form  of  the  pre-Aryan  Indian 
village  and  kingdom  was  that  which  was  framed  by  the  sons 
of  the  tortoise.  It  was  they,  as  I  have  already  explained, 
who  placed  the  royal  province  in  the  centre  of  the  kingdom. 
The  object  aimed  at  by  these  statesmen  was  not  to  override 
popular  rights,  but  to  prevent  republican  liberty  from 
degenerating  into  licence,  and  to  ensure  universal  obedience 
to  the  great  law  of  national  duty  on  which  Dravidian  ethics 
were  founded.  They  therefore  held  it  necessary  that  the 
royal  authority  sliould  not  only  appear  visibly  in  the  rule  of 
the  central  province  allotted  to  the  king,  but  that  it  should 
be  represented  in  each  village,  and  it  was  on  these  principles 
that  the  government  of  the  Ooraon  village  of  Chota  Nagpore 
was  constructed .^The  Ooraon  form  of  village  government 
is  that  which  has  been  preserved  with  less  alteration  from 


ESSAY  II  91 

'subsequent  invaders  than  that  of  any  other  part  of  India, 
for  the  Ooraons,  Mundas,  Ho  Kols,  and  Bhuyas  have  always 
been  able,  under  the  protection  of  their  mountain-fastnesses, 
their  political  organisation,  and  their  national  love  of  in- 
dependence to  keep  their  country  free  from  the  interference 
of  the  hated  Sadhs,  the  name  by  which  they  call  the  Hindus. 
But  these  people,  who  repelled  and  held  themselves  aloof 
from  later  invaders,  were  of  no  less  foreign  origin  than  those 
who  succeeded  them,  for  they  were  all  formed  by  the  union 
with  the  matriarchal  Australioids  and  patriarchal  Mongols 
of  Finnish  and  other  Northern  stocks,  most  of  whom,  as  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  were  formed  into  confederated  tribes 
of  artisans  and  agriculturists  in  Asia  Minor  ;  and  it  was  from 
the  southern  part  of  Asia  Minor,  or  Northern  Palestine,  the 
indigenous  home  of  the  wild  ass,  that  the  Ooraons,  who  still 
call  themselves  *  the  sons  of  the  ass,**  came.    They  themselves 
say  that  they  came  from  Western  India,  from  the  land  of 
Ruhidas,^  but  this  means  the  land  of  the  red-men,  or  Syria, 
the  country  whose  people  are  called  Rotou  by  the  Egyptians, 
arid  they  were  the  race  who  introduced  barley  and  plough- 
tillage  into  India  and  Chota  Nagpore.      In  each  of  their 
villages  a  certain  proportion  of  the  best  land,  called  Manjhus 
land,  varying  in  area  according  to  the  size  of  the  village,  was 
set  apart  for  the  service  of  the  king  or  chief,  an  arrangement 
which  is  exactly  similar  to  that  which  assigned  land,  called 
the  Lord''s  land,  to  the  ruling  power  in  the  English  manorial 
village.     This  land  was  cultivated  by  the  tenants  to  whom 
arable  land  was  allotted,  and  this  labour  was  the  rent  they 
paid  for  the  land  they  tilled  for  their  own  maintenance,  and 
for  government  protection.     The  produce  of  the  Manjhus 
land  was  either  stored  in  the  royal  granaries,  distributed 
over  the  country  as  supply-centres,  wlience  provisions  could 
l)e  drawn  for  the  camps  accompanying  tlie  king  or  cliief  in 
the  frequent  progresses  through  their  dominions,  whicli  these 
ancient  rulers  used  to  make,  or  else  wlien  the  village  was 

^  Ruhidas  is  the  land  of  the  red  men,  see  Essay  ii. ,  p.  46. 


92    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

given  as  pay,  or  as  a  maintenance  grant,  by  the  Raja  or  chief 
to  a  subordinate  or  relation,  the  yield  of  the  Manjhus  crops 
was  made  over  to  the  grantee.  The  rest  of  the  land  was 
divided  into  allotments,  called  koonts^  which  were  generally 
five  in  number,  though  in  Chuttisgurh,  where  I  had  more 
practical  experience  of  village  organisation  than  elsewhere, 
I  have  found  villages  where  more  divisions  were  made.  Three 
of  these  were  assigned  to  the  families  who  received  the  right 
to  fill  the  superior  village  offices.  And  all  these  offices,  and 
not  merely  that  of  the  Mundci,  as  among  the  Kols,  were 
made  hereditary.  The  cultivators  belonging  to  the  families 
on  whom  these  hereditary  rights  were  conferred,  were  called 
bhtmhiarSj  '  or  sons  of  the  soil  **  {bhum\  and  these  families 
represented  the  original  settlers.  One  of  these  koonts  was 
set  apart  for  the  Munda  or  headman,  but  he  was  no  longer 
supreme  in  the  village,  but  divided  his  authority  with  the 
Pahan,  or  village  priest,  and  a  new  officer  appointed  by  the 
Naga  kings,  called  the  Mahto  or  accountant,  whose  especial 
business  it  was  to  superintend  the  cultivation  of  the  Manjhus 
land.  He  was  a  royal  steward,  but  the  office  was  not  one  to 
which  an  outsider  could  be  appointed,  but  it  must  be  held  by 
one  of  the  family,  to  which  the  right  of  supplying  the  Mahto 
was  originally  assigned.  All  the  land  outside  that  belonging 
to  these  bhunhiari  allotments,  and  the  Manjhus  land,  was 
cultivated  by  descendants  of  persons  admitted  into  the 
village  community  after  the  date  of  its  original  settlement ; 
but  these  cultivators  of  the  second  order  were  not  tenants 
without  rights  of  ])roperty  in  the  land,  but  members  of  the 
village  community,  who  had,  except  as  regards  the  right  of 
eligibility  to  the  village  offices,  the  same  rights  as  the  bhun- 
hiar/t  to  a  share  of  the  arable  land  of  the  village,  and  both, 
as  I  shall  show,  had  their  definite  duties  assigned  to  them. 
The  duties  of  the  Pahan  were  to  offer  the  sacrifices  necessary 
to  propitiate  the  village  gods,  and  to  drive  away  bhuts  or 
evil  spirits,  and  the  names  given  to  the  Pahnai  lands  assigned 
as  payment  for  the  Pahan,  who  answers  to  the  priest  of  an 


ESSAY  II  93 

English  parish,  gives  most  valuable  insight  into  the  funda- 
mental articles  of  the  creed  of  the  united  Dravidian  and 
Kolarian  races.  It  is  divided  into  four  sections  called  (1) 
Dali-ka-tarl,  (2)  Desauli-bhut-kheU,  (3)  Gaon-deotl-bhut- 
kheta,  and  (4)  Chandi-khet. 

The  first  division,  the  Dali-ka-tari,  the  basket  (dali)  of  Ea 
the  great  snake  goddess  (tarl\^  the  rain-mother,  whose 
dwelling-place  was  unknown,  and  who  ruled  both  heaven  and 
earth,  was  far  the  largest  of  the  four,  and  was  held  by  the 
Palian  for  the  worship  of  the  goddess,  who  was  called  Lut- 
kum-budi,  the  wise  creeper  {Luta\  or  more  usually  Jahir 
budi,  whose  spirit  was  supposed  to  reside  in  the  Sama,  or 
village  grove.  Thrice  a  year  fowls,  and  a  pig  every  ten  or 
twelve  years,  are  offered  to  her  to  secure  good  crops.  And 
these  three  annual  offerings  are  made  to  the  seasonal  gods  of 
the  Northern  race,  who  worshipped  Vasu,  the  god  who  in  the 
Mahabharata  is  said  to  have  set  up  the  rain-pole  in  the  Sakti 
mountains,  or  those  of  Chota  Nagpore.  (2)  The  Desauli- 
bhut-kheta  is  held  for  the  worship  of  the  husband  of  the 
mother-goddess,  called  Lut-kum-hadam,  the  staff  of  the 
creeper,  the  tree  round  which  it  twines.  Fowls  are  offered 
to  him  yearly,  a  ram  every  five,  and  a  buffalo  every  ten  ;  and 
we  thus  find  him  as  a  tree-god  and  also  as  a  sun-god  to  whom 
fowls  were  sacred,  and  as  the  god  Varuna,  whose  victim  was  the 
ram,  and  who  is  the  father-god  of  the  sons  of  the  wild  cow 

*  TaiiL  is  the  snake-goddess,  whose  shrine  at  Hudh-(Jya  is  mentioned  by 
Hiouen  Tsiang,  Bks.  viii.  and  ix.  ;  Ideal's  Records  of  the  Wtstern  iror/c/,  vol. 
iL  pp.  103  and  174.  Hiouen  Tsiang  calls  her  a  form  of  Bcwlhi-satva,  or  of  the 
god  who  has  the  knowledge  of  truth.  She  is  still  worshippcil  in  Orissa  by  the 
KhondsasTara  Pennu,  the  female  (/V//)  Tara,  and  thus  she  is  a  snake  and  star 
goddess,  foTiaras,  which  has  become  our  '  star/  is  in  Gondi  a  snake,  and  thc 
Hioduname  for  heaven  was  Nug-kshetra,  or  the  field  of  the  Naga  snakes. 
She  was  called  Ka  in  the  worship  of  Praja-ixiti,  the  pre-Aryan  father-god,  as 
I  show  in  Essay  ill.,  but  ATi  was  not  originally  an  interrogative  pronoun,  but 
the  name  of  the  earth-goddess,  the  soul  or  spirit  of  life  in  the  soil,  which  l)e- 
cune  the  Greek  Gea  and  Gaiay  the  earth,  the  Kolarian  Gowa  village,  and 
^  Finnic  A'uu,  the  moon.  I  have  shown  in  the  Preface  the  significance  of 
(be  grain  basket,  which  became  the  Liknos  of  the  Greeks. 


94    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIME 

(Gauri).  (3)  The  Gaon-deoti-bhut-kheta  is  the  portion  as — 
signed  to  the  goddess,  called  Ikir-budi,  the  god  who  procures 
the  general  welfare  of  the  village,  the  god  Goraya  of  the 
Dosadhs.  It  is  to  her  that  the  Akur  (the  Eolarian  word 
for  enclosure)  or  the  whole  village  area,  and  the  Akra,  or 
dancing  ground,  are  dedicated,  and  it  is  in  her  honour  that 
the  seasonal  village  dances  are  held,  and  she  is  the  vital 
spirit  animating  both  the  father  and  mother-gods  of  genera- 
tion in  the  trees  of  the  Sama.  These  three  gods  were  the 
primaeval  triad,  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  was  composed 
of  the  father-god  Linga  and  his  two  wives,  the  mothers  of 
the  Northern  patriarchal  and  Southern  matriarchal  races 
who  were  originally  the  three  seasons  of  the  year  of  the 
Northern  races.  The  fourth  division,  the  Chandi-khet,  or 
moon-field,  is  sacred  to  the  moon-goddess,  to  wliom  a  she- 
goat,  the  lunar  victim,  is  offered  every  four  or  five  years. 
This  was  the  goddess  who  ruled  the  eleven  lunar  months, 
consecrated  first  to  the  ten  mothers,  and  afterwards  to  the 
eleven  gods  of  generation  of  the  growers  of  barley.^ 

The  first  duties  of  tlie  Mahto  or  accountant,  who  became 
the  Patwari  of  the  North-west  and  the  Kulkami  of  the 
Bombay  village  system  were,  as  I  have  shown,  to  superintend 
the  cultivation  of  the  Manjhus  hmd;  but  when  the  cultiva- 
tors who  did  not  hold  service-land  were  obliged  to  add  per- 
sonal contributions  in  grain,  in  proportion  to  the  size  of 
their  holdings,  to  the  cultivation  of  the  Manjhus  land,  the 
Mahto  had  to  collect  these  dues,  while  tlie  cultivators  were 
compensated  for  the  extra  taxes  demanded  from  them  by 
the  assignment  to  tliem  of  a  plot  of  land  called  '  beth-kheta,** 
which  they  held  free  of  revenue.  The  privileged  families  in 
Chota  Nagpore,  and,  as   I   shall  show   afterwards,   in   the 

^  The  greater  part  of  this  account  of  the  division  of  the  Pahnai  lands  is 
taken  from  an  ofificial  report  prepared  by  Babu  Rakhal  Dass  Iluldar,  appointed 
in  1869  as  Special  Commissioner  to  inquire  into  Chota  Nagpore  tenures  ;  my 
copy  is  annotated  by  General  Dalton.  The  interpretations  I  have  added  are 
my  own,  and  are  derived  from  the  studies  which  have  led  me  to  write  these 
Essays. 


ESSAY  II  95 

Dekhan,  paid,  till  the  Aryan  conquest,  no  taxes  in  grain  ; 
but  besides  the  services  rendered  bv  the  heads  of  the  clans 
chosen  to  fill  the  village  offices,  the  other  members  gave 
general  suit  and  service  to  the  Raja  and  his  official  repre- 
sentatives. They  carried  their  baggage  on  a  journey,  sup- 
plied them  and  travellers  visiting  the  village  with  wood  and 
grass;  thatched  and  repaired  the  houses  and  granaries  of 
their  chief;  looked  after  the  village  boundaries;  and  kept 
order  in  the  village. 

The  subordinate  village  officers,  who  were  paid  generally 
in  grain,  but  sometimes  in  land,  were  (1)  the  water-carrier, 
who  was  the  Pahan's  assistant,  and  who  is  in  every  village  ; 
and  besides  him,  there  were  others  who  generally  gave  their 
services  to  more  than  one  village.  These  were  (2)  the  black- 
smith ;  (3)  the  potter ;  (4)  the  cowherd  ;  (5)  the  barber ; 
(6)  the  washerman ;  and  (7)  the  watchman  or  policeman, 
and  besides  these  there  was,  as  I  have  already  said,  in  every 
parha  or  taluka  the  Ojha,  or  exorcise r,  the  survivor  of  the 
tribal  Byga. 

It  was  this  village,  governed  by  the  three  chief  authorities, 
the  Munda,  assisted  by  the  Pahan  and  Mahto,  which  is  repro- 
duced in  the  earliest  form  of  the  Dravidian  State,  which  we 
find  in  the  primitive  Bliuya  State  of  Gangpore.  There  the 
Raja  rules  the  Central  Provinces  through  which  the  Eebe 
flows;  while  his  two  chief  subordinates  are  (1)  the  Zemindar 
of  the  Eastern  Province  of  Nuggra,  who  hfis  the  title  of 
Mahapatur  or  Prime  Minister,  and  represents  a  village 
Pahan;  and  (2)  the  chief  of  the  Western  Province  of 
Hingir  called  the  ghuroutia^  or  house-manager,  tJie  State 
Mahto,  who  afterwards  developed  into  the  sena-pati  or 
com  mander-in-ch  ief . 

Considering  that  the  Indian  kingdoms,  which  were  finally 
consolidated  into  the  great  confederacy  of  the  Kushika 
federal  empire,  were  formed  from  provinces  of  united  vil- 
lages ;  and  that  the  unions  of  provinces  outside  those  parts 
of  the  country  where  the  Kushite  power  was  strongest,  were 


96    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

apparently  somewhat  fluctuating,  we  cannot  be  surprised  at 
the  large  number  of  kingdoms  and  States  named  in  the  cata- 
logues given  in  the  Mahabharata,  Brihat  -  Saihhita,  and 
Puranas.  But  unfortunately  we  cannot  identify  all,  or  any- 
thing like  all,  the  States  named  in  the  lists,  and  the  repeti- 
tions that  occur  in  them  show  conclusively  that  their  writers 
did  not  examine  them  critically  and  ascertain  their  accuracy 
before  publishing  them,  and  beyond  the  certainty  that  the 
States  were  so  small  as  to  make  their  total  number  very  great, 
we  can  deduce  no  other  definite  conclusions  from  the  one 
hundred  and  thirty-three  kingdoms  named  in  the  Maha- 
bharata  as  conquered  by  the  Pandava  ^  princes,  or  of  the  two 
hundred  and  thirty-three  countries  named  in  the  catalogue 
of  Indian  kingdoms  given  in  the  same  poem  in  the  Bhishma 
Parva.^  Judging  from  the  evidence  furnished  by  the  state- 
ment in  the  Jaina  Sutras,  that  at  the  time  of  the  birth  of 
the  Jain  prophet  Maha-vTra,  about  550  b.c.,  the  kingdom  of 
Videha  was  divided  into  eighteen  States,  nine  belonging  to 
the  Mallis,  and  nine  to  the  Licchavis,  and  from  the  areas  of 
the  Chota  Nagpore  kingdoms  which  have  preserved  their 
ancient  boundaries  almost  intact,  it  would  seem  that  the 
originally  confederated  parhas  which  united  themselves  into 
a  kingdom,  were  in  the  more  cultivated  parts  of  the  country 
somewhat  less  than  1100  square  miles,  the  average  area  of 
an  English  county.  Thus  the  area  included  in  the  ancient 
kingdom  of  Videha  was  that  now  occupied  by  the  districts 
of  Ghorakpore,  Chumparun,  and  Muzafferpore,  and  possibly 
also  those  of  Darbhangah  on  the  east,  and  Busti  on  the 
north-west.  It  measures  about  17,000  square  miles,  and  as 
the  Terai  lands  of  Busti  must  have  then  been  waste  forest, 
the  average  size  of  each  of  the  States  forming  the  con- 
federacy could  not  have  been  so  large  as  an  English  count}'. 
Chota  Nagpore,  again,  covers  an  area  of  46,000  square  miles, 
and  was  formerly  divided  into  eleven  States   forming  the 

^  ^^hhdi  (Digvijaya)  Parva,  xxvii.-xxxii.  pp.  80-94. 

^  Bhishma  {Jambu-khanda  nirmdna)  Parva,  Ix.  pp.  31-34. 


ESSAY  II  97 

whole  or  outlying  portions  of  five  confederacies*  These  last 
were  those  of  ChotaNagpore,  Pachete,  Sirgoojya,  the  Cheroo 
kingdom  of  Behar,  and  the  State  of  Samhulpore.  In  the 
Chota  Nagpore  confederacy  were  included  (1)  the  kingdom 
of  the  Chota  Nagpore  Raja ;  (2)  of  Ramghur,  held  by  his 
commander-in-chief;  and  (3)  Porahat.  That  of  Pachete 
is  the  same  as  the  present  district  of  Manbhum,  and  it  was  a 
dependency  of  Chota  Nagpore.  The  Sirgoojya  confederacy 
comprised  the  present  States  of  Sirgoojya,  Jushpore,  and 
Oodeypore ;  and  it  was  a  dependency  of  the  great  Gond  king- 
dom, of  which  Chuttisgurh  was  the  centre,  while  Gangpore 
and  Bonai  were  border  States  of  Sambulpore,  and  Sambulpore, 
again,  was  a  border  kingdom  of  Chuttisgurli.  Palamow, 
again,  was  a  border  State  of  the  Cheroo  kingdom,  and  tlie 
eleventh  independent  State  was  the  confederacy  of  the  Ho 
Kols,  which  was  nominally  a  dependency  of  Porahat.  The 
average  size  of  each  of  these  eleven  States,  which  are  spread 
over  a  mountainous  country,  is  about  4200  square  miles ; 
but  if  the  great  States  of  Chota  Nagpore  and  Ramghur, 
Palamow  and  Pachete,  each  of  which  is  composed  of  a  num- 
ber of  smaller  States,  be  excluded,  there  will  remain  for  the 
seven  smaller  States  about  21,000  square  miles,  or  3000 
square  miles  apiece.  Thus,  even  in  tlie  forest  and  mountain 
country,  the  average  area  of  each  State  was  small,  and  the 
original  provinces  or  parhas^  which  made  up  the  larger  pro- 
vinces, which  were  united  into  a  kingdom,  could  not  have 
been,  on  an  average,  much  larger  than  one  parha^  in  the 
more  populous  parts  of  the  country.  This  division  of 
the  country  into  small  definite  areas  was  one  that  was  copied 
in  the  Euphratean  States,  Palestine,  Egypt,  Maritime  Asia 
Minor,  Greece,  and  Maritime  Italy ;  only  that  in  all  these 
countries  the  centre  of  each  union  of  villages  was  the  city. 
But  the  city  was  a  product  of  trade ;  and  tlie  fact  that 
Indian  cities  never  attained  the  power  they  reached  in  all 
the  other  countries  of  Babylonia,  Assyria,  Palestine,  Egypt, 
Asia  Minor,  Greece,  and  Italy,  shows  that  India,  as  a 
7 


98    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

country  where  prosperity  was  first  founded  on  the  agricul- 
tural matriarchal  village,  had  retained  its  old  national 
organisation  as  the  basis  of  social  rule,  even  after  it  had 
become  the  great  trading  country  of  the  South,  and  after 
the  Indian  merchant  seamen^  guided,  as  I  have  shown  in 
Essay  iii.,  by  the  stars  of  their  mother-constellation,  the 
Pleiades,  had  taken  their  fish-god  to  Eridu,  where  he  became 
the  god  called  la  or  Yah  and  Assor,  the  supreme  god  of 
the  Semite  race.  It  was  there  that  the  commercial  pro- 
sperity began  which  enriched  the  powerful  empires  of  Baby- 
lonia, Assyria,  and  Egypt;  and  in  these  countries  the 
villages  of  the  matriarchal  tribes,  who  were  the  first  immi- 
grants, receded  into  the  background ;  while  the  cities,  which 
were  all  stages  along  the  trade  routes  and  rivera  which  tra- 
versed the  country,  and  were  the  motive  powers  which  formed 
these  kingdoms,  became  the  centres  whence  the  country  was 
ruled.  In  India  likewise,  the  trading  cities  of  Pushkalavati, 
Multan  or  Mallitana,  the  place  of  the  Mallis,  and  Patala  ruled 
the  commerce  of  the  Indus  and  the  five  rivers  of  the  Punjab. 
Those  of  Muttra,  Kosambi,  and  Kashi  or  Benares,  on  the 
Jumna  and  Ganges,  Ujjen,  Baragyza,  Surat,  and  Dwaraka, 
the  arteries  of  the  land  and  sea  trade  of  the  West,  were  the 
capitals  of  powerful  States  ;  but  none  of  them,  except  Kashi 
or  Benares,  ever  attained  the  commanding  position  held  by 
Babylon  and  Nineveh  in  Babylonia  and  Assyria.  But 
though  the  Turanian  king-makers  did  not  make  the  cities 
in  India  so  prominent  as  in  other  countries  where  they 
ruled,  they  yet  succeeded  thoroughly  in  making  the  personal 
rule  of  the  village  headman,  raised  to  be  an  imperial  ruler,  the 
national  form  of  government ;  and  we  have  no  evidence  in 
India  of  any  contention  taking  place  between  the  republi- 
cans and  tyrants,  or  the  personal  rulers  of  the  sons  of  Tur,^ 
which  distinguished  Greek  and  Roman  history.  In  these 
last  countries,  we  find  that  the  republican  form  of  govem- 

^  The  Greek  Htpavvoi  is  almost  certainly  derived  from  the  Tur ;  the  form  of 
government  he  represented  was  that  of  the  Turanian  races. 


ESSAY  II  99 

menty  which  is  best  represented  in  India  by  that  of  the  Ho 
Kols,  in  continual  contention  with  that  of  the  Turanian 
tyrants;  and  we  see  in  the  finally  established  form  of 
government  by  the  Amphictyonic  Council  a  reproduction  of 
the  council  of  the  Kolarian  Mankis,  brought  from  India  by 
the  matriarchal  races,  who  were  best  represented  by  the 
lonians  of  Asia  Minor. 

But  the  true  cause  of  the  national  disputes  in  Greece 
and  Rome  as  to  the  merits  of  republican,  aristocratic,  and 
kingly  government  is  apparently  to  be  found  in  the  invasion 
of  the  later  Aryans,  who  looked  to  the  individual  and  his 
family  as  the  national  unit.    They  succeeded   the    Semitic 
rulers,  the  Indian  Sombunsi  or  sons  of  the  moon,  who,  as 
well  as  the  Aryans,  who  inherited  from  them  the  institution 
of  slavery,  were  much  less  careless  of  the  personal  comfort  of 
their  subordinates  than  the  Dravido-Turanian  kings.    The 
great  object  of  the  Semite  king  was  to  accumulate  wealth, 
and  that  of  the  Aryan  to  acquire  personal  glory,  and  as 
long  as  they  did   that,  they  did  not,  in  many  cases,  care 
how  much  their  subjects  suffered ;  but  under  the  rule  of  the 
Indian  Dravido-Turanian,   Chakravarti   kings,   or  lords  of 
the  wheel  {ChaJcra\  the  personal  rule  of  the  Raja  could  but 
rarely  degenerate  into  tyranny  as  the  people  were  every- 
where consulted,  and  were  entirely  at  one  with  the  Govern- 
ment  in   the  objects  they  sought  to  attain.      Their  sole 
duties  consisted  in  doing  for  the  Raja  the  light  personal 
service  required  in  return  for  the  lands  they  held,  in  keeping 
the  king^s  granaries  full,  and  paying  the  police.    The  soldiers 
were  maintained  by  the  contributions  collected   from  the 
towns  and  villages,  and  were  merely  used  for  purposes  of 
defence  and  for  protecting  the  trade,  which  enriched  the 
people  as  well  as  the  king ;  but,  above  all,  both  kings  and 
people  were  trained  from  their  earliest  infancy  to  maintain  ,■ 
the  national  customs  handed  down  by  their  forefathers,  to  1 
carry  out  the  orders  given  in  emergencies  by  the  ruling  ' 
authorities,  and  to  seek  for  redress  of  grievances  from  the 


100  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

constituted  authorities,  and  not  by  popular  tumult     The 
working  of  the  constitution  and  the  protection  of  the  artisans 
were  ensured  by  an  excellent  police  service  and  a  system  of 
village  and  town  committees,  each  of  which  consisted  of  five 
persons.     These  are  fully  described  by  Strabo,  quoting  from 
Megasthenes,^  and  are  also  spoken  of  in  the  Mahabharata, 
where  it  is  said  '  the  five  grave  and  wise  men  employed  in 
the  five  offices  of  protecting  the  city,  the  citadel,  the  mer- 
chants, agriculturists,   and  in  punishing  criminals,   should 
always   act  in    unison ;  ^  ^  and    this   passage,   like    Strabo^s 
longer  description,  shows  that  in  the  Dravidian  State  there 
was  a  separate  board  for  each  department.   The  Mahabharata 
also,   in  a  few  lines  after  tliis  last  passage,  mentions  the 
police.     These  boards  and  the  former  police  system  still  sur- 
vive in  the  village  paJichayats  or  Councils  of  Five  ;  and  the 
cJiokidars  or  \illage  or  rural  policemen,  which  are  still  found 
everywhere  throughout  India ;  and  the  titles  of  the  Dosadhs, 
who,  besides  being  priests  of  the  fire-god,  are  still  hereditary 
policemen  in  Behar,  show  that  this  State  organisation  dates 
back  to  a  time  even  earlier  than  Kushika  or  Naga  rule,  for 
they  are  called  chaukidar  or  watchmen,  goraity  or  guardian  of 
boundaries ;  mahato,  or  king''s  steward  in  the  village  council, 
nianjhiy  or  chief.^     To  keep  each  part  of  the  State  in  con- 
stant touch  with  the  central  authorities,  the  kingdoms  were, 
as  I  have  shown,  small,  especially  in  populous  parts  of  the 
country.     But  they  were  all  linked  together  by  a  conscious- 
ness of  mutual  dependence,  and  a  knowledge  of  the  neces- 
sity of  common  action  for  the  promotion  of  trade ;  and  in 
the  most  prosperous  periods  they  were  grouped  for  purposes 
of  defence  and  offence,  round  a  small  number  of  common 
rulers,  who  controlled  the  foreign  and  military  policy  of  the 
federation,  leaving  the  internal  government  to  the  authori- 
ties of  tlie  several  States.     In  States  constituted  on  these 

^  Strabo,  xv.  i.  47-62 ;  M*Crindle,  Aftcient  India,  pp.  83-89. 

'  Sabha  {Lokapala  Sabhakhyana\  Parva,  v.  p.  17. 

'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  Appendix  i.  p.  44. 


ESSAY  II  101 

principles,  the  people  combined  with  the  Governments  in 
keeping  down  predatory  bands,  and  fostering  trade  by  every 
means  in  their  power ;  the  inducement  being  that  as  long  as 
they  discharged  the  light  duties  required  by  the  State,  kept 
the  king^s  granaries  full,  and  provided  for  the  support  of 
the  soldiers  and  police,  they  retained  all  the  profits  they 
made.  They,  therefore,  united  with  the  Government  in 
(Securing  the  undisturbed  collection  of  tlie  gold,  jewels,  and 
other  property  exported,  at  the  very  early  period  when  the 
mineral  wealth  of  India  had  been  discovered,  and  its  value 
for  trading  purposes  discerned ;  in  taking  care  that  agricul- 
turists, artisans,  and  traders  were  allowed  to  work  in  peace 
and  quiet ;  in  ensuring  the  safe-conduct'of  goods  to  and  from 
the  ports,  and  in  protecting  the  possessions  of  foreign  and 
native  merchants.  The  commerce  thus  fostered  was  free, 
hampered  by  no  transit  dues  and  restrictions,  and  all  alike, 
lx)th  the  Government  and  the  people  it  ruled,  shared  in  the 
profits.  It  was  this  system  of  wisely  organised  trade  which 
was  that  which  prevailed  throughout  India,  with  of  course 
temporary  intervals  of  disturbance,  down  to  the  end  of  the 
rule  of  the  Sombunsi,  or  sons  of  the  moon,  whose  history 
forms  the  closing  period  of  that  sketched  in  Essay  iii. 
This  had  gradually  grown  during  the  long  period  that  had 
elapsed  since  the  matriarchal  tribes  first  made  their  way  to 
the  Persian  Gulf  by  coasting  voyages,  and  since  the  much 
more  extensive  and  regular  trade  which  grew  up,  as  I  have 
described  in  Essay  in.,  under  the  rule  of  the  star-worshippers 
had  developed  into  the  commerce  which  made  the  sons  of 
Sin  (the  moon),  the  early  Semites,  the  great  traders  of  the 
world.  Up  to  the  close  of  this  period,  though  the  influence 
of  the  semi-Aryan  fire-worshippers,  and  of  the  Aryan 
-builders,  and  sons  of  the  bull,  had  greatly  changed  the 
tribal  constitutions  and  racial  characteristics  of  the  people, 
with  whom  they  had  amalgamated  to  form  the  Magadha 
and  Semitic  races,  yet  they  had  never  become  the  dominant 
power  in  the  land.     The  Indian  village  community  of  the 


102  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Kushite  race  bears  very  slight  traces  of  their  individualistic 
policy,  while  the  history  of  the  Aryan  race  and  of  their 
subsequent  influence  on  the  Indian  village  community,  proves 
conclusively  that  the  village  communities  in  India,  South* 
western  Asia  and  South-eastern  Europe  had  been  fully 
developed  and  their  constitutions  fixed,  before  the  Aryan 
race  called  in  India  the  Suraj-bunsi,  or  sons  of  the  Sun,  and 
the  Pitaro''gnisliavattah,  or  fathers  who  bunied  their  dead, 
had  started  from  North-western  Europe,  and  overrun  both 
Europe  and  South-western  Asia,  towards  the  close  of  the 
Bronze  Age,  when  the  burning  of  the  dead  begins  to  be 
nearly  universal.^  The  sacrifice  offered  to  the  Pitaro'^gnisha- 
vattah  at  the  Pitriyajfia  is  porridge,  made  of  part  of  the 
roasted  barley  offered  to  the  Pitaro  Barishadah,  the  Nagas 
or  Kushites,  mixed  with  the  milk  of  a  cow  suckling  an 
adopted  calf.^  This  adopted  calf  was  tlie  Aryan  race,  who 
joined  their  predecessors,  the  sons  of  the  red  cow,  RohinI,  or 
the  star  Aldebaran,*  the  leading  star  in  Taurus,  the  constella* 
tion  which,  under  its  Hindu  name  of  Pushya,  ruled  the  first 
month  of  the  lunar  year  of  their  predecessors,  the  yellow  race. 
They  had  become  Semites,  and  buried  tlieir  dead,  whereas  the 
Aryans  always  burned  them,  and  tliis  mode  of  burial  was,  as  we 
learn  from  the  Song  qfBeozvulf\  that  which  was  always  prac- 
tised by  the  typical  Aryan  race,  tlie  Low  German  Saxons ;  and 
it  was  only  stopped  by  the  severe  laws  forbidding  the  practice 
made  by  Charlemagne.  But  what  most  especially  distin- 
guished this  people  from  all  other  European  races  was  their 
land  tenure,  for  among  tliese  Frisians  or  Saxons,  property  in 
land  was  vested  in  the  family,  and  not  in  the  whole  village 
community.  As  Tacitus  says  of  them,  '  They  could  not 
endure  houses  close  to  one  another.  Scattered  and  separated, 
they  settle  where  attracted  by  a  spring,  a  pasture,  or  a  grove. 
The  villages  are  not  arranged,  as  among  us  Romans,  with 

^  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  2nd  ed.  pp.  49-50. 

'  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh.  ii.  6.  i.  6.  ;  S.B.E.,  vol.  xii.  p.  421. 

^  Sachau's  Alberuni*s  India,  vol.  ii.  chap.  iv.  p.  66, 


ESSAY  II  103 

united  dependent  buildings.  Each  man  surrounds  his  house 
with  a  garth,  from  fear  of  fire  or  from  ignorance  how  to  build. 
They  do  not  use  stones  or  tiles,  but  employ  a  common  material 
without  show  or  value  (kneaded  clay)  and  thatch.**  ^  The 
Nervii,  described  by  Caesar,  who  used  the  hedges  which  fenced 
their  fields  as  a  means  of  defence  against  their  enemies, 
belong  to  this  race.*  It  was  among  the  Westphalian  hedges 
that  Varro''s  army  was  destroyed  by  Arminius.  They  were 
thus  essentially  different  from  the  Suevi  or  Swabians,  likewise 
described  by  Caesar  and  Tacitus,  '  who  have  no  private  and 
separate  fields  with  proper  boundaries,  but  the  magistrates 
and  princes  in  assembly  divide  the  land  annually  in  propor- 
tion,** just  in  the  same  way  as  I  have  described  as  customary 
in  Chuttisgurh,  *  while  the  village  tenants  of  the  lord,'  like 
the  members  of  an  Indian  village  community  who  do  not 
belong  to  the  official  families,  '  each  occupies  his  own  house, 
and  pays  a  tribute  of  corn,  cattle,  and  flax.**'  Among  the 
Aryan  Saxons  every  farmer  has  his  hof^  or  house  and  farm- 
yard, and  his  compact  fields.  Several  scattered  farms  form  a 
hauerschqfi^  which  generally  bears  the  name  of  the  oldest 
and  most  honourable  Ao/J  and  its  proprietor  is  called 
hauptmann,  head-man  or  captain,  while  it  is  called  the 
RechUHqf^  or  court  of  judgment.  Here,  as  in  the  sabha 
o(  the  Indian  Aryans,*  the  yeomen  of  the  batierschqft 
assemble,  debate  on  the  affairs  of  their  society,  decide  on 
marriages,  patch  up  quarrels,  and  strike  bargains,  and  there 
they  formerly  exercised  political  authority,  pronounced 
and  carried  out  capital  sentences,  and  it  was  they  who 
originated  the  Holy  Vehm,^  and  this  meeting-place  of  the 
Sabhd^  the  property  of  the  ruling  member  of  the  bauerschq/t^ 
is   essentially   different  from    the   Gemeindc  Haas  of  the 

^  Tacitus,  De  Germanidt  1 6.  *  Cesar,  De  Bello  Gallico^  ii.  17. 

'  Gesar,  ibid.  iv.  i.;  vi.  2i.     Tacitus,  De  Germanid,  25-26. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  91.  20.    Zimmer,  Altindesches  Lebetty  p.  172. 

•  Baring-Gould,  Germany  Past  and  Present ^  Kegan  Paul  and  Co.  (1879), 
vol.  i.  chap.  iv.  p.  107.; 


104  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Southern  Swabians,  the  village  hall  of  the  Indian  Dravidians, 
which  is  found  in  every  Dravidian  village  in  India,  and  in 
those  of  Burmah,  Siam,  and  Aifnam,  either  as  a  common 
dancing  or  meeting-place,  or  as  a  building  similar  to  that  of 
the  German  village,  owned  by  the  community  as  a  place  for 
public  meetings,  and  for  the  entertainment   of  strangers. 
The  bauerscha/i  of  the  Low  German  Aryans  is  the  bratsvo 
or  community  of  brothers,  described  by  Schrader  as  existing 
among  the  Southern  Slaves.     Each  hratsvo  owns  a  common 
landed  estate,  in  which  each  family  holds  a  definite  and  com- 
pact portion.     The  number  of  men  in  a  bratsvo  capable  of 
bearing  arms  vary  from  thirty  to  eiglit  hundred,  and  occupy 
one  or  more  villages.     They  fight  side  by  side  in  battle,  and 
their  leader  is  chosen  by  the  bratsvenici.     He  is  their  leader 
in    war,    their  political    representative   in   peace,   to   some 
extent  the  tribal  judge,  and  the  leader  of  public  assemblies ; 
and  in  the  latter  only  leaders  of  households  have  a  right  to 
sit  and  vote,  and  the  rest  have  only  the  right  of  acclama- 
tion.*    The  origin  whence  these  brotherhoods  sprang  must 
be  sought  for  in  the  Celtic  Sept,  in  which  each  tribesman 
and  his  family  have  a  right  to  a  definite  portion  of  land 
within  the  territory  belonging  to  the  Sept.     Tlie  villages  of 
those  bratsvo  communities  find  their  precise  counterparts  in 
those  known  in  the  North-west  Provinces  in  India  as  patti- 
dari   villages    held    by   Rajput   clans,   where    tlie    land    is 
divided  among  the  householders  who  are  related  by  blood, 
and  where  each  household  hiis  its  own  fixed  holding.     The 
chief  foes  of  the  Aryans,  when  they  came  to  India,  were  the 
Asliura  or  Ashadha,  the  dominant  trading-races  who  ruled 
the  land,  and  hence  we  are  told  in  the  Malulbharata  that 
the  great  allies  of  tlie  early  Brahmins  were  the  Nishadhas, 
or  the  nice  who  did  not  (mi)  belong  to  the  Asha^has;  and 
it  was  with   tliem   they  intermarried.-      The  Aryan  new- 

*  Jevons*  Schradcr's  rrehistoric  Antiquiiies  of  the  Aryans^  Part  iv.  chap, 
xii ;  sect.  iii.  p.  397. 

'  Mahabharatn  Adi  {Asfika)  Parva,  xxvii.-xxix.  pp.  94-97. 


ESSAY  II  105 

coiners  were  mucli  more  like  the  Kolarians  than  the  silent 
and  reserved  Dravidians;  for,  like  the  former,   they  were 
brave  and  adventurous,  and  also  witty,  vivacious,  and  fond 
of  talking.      But   they  were  much    more   thoughtful    and 
thoroughgoing  than   the  Indian  Eols,  and  were  a  warlike 
race,  loving  personal  glory,  whose  cities  were  the  forts  built 
for  the  defence  of  the  property  of  the  bauerschqfi — the  peel 
towers  of  the  English  Border — ^to  wliich  they  retreated  when 
worsted  in  the  field  by  invaders.     They  were  very  inferior  to 
the  Dravidians  in  their  elaboration  of  details,  and  less  soli- 
citous  for    the    preservation   of   law   and    order,   of  strict 
obedience  to  the  rules  laid  down  by  the  governing  authori- 
ties, and  much  less  careful  in  their  organisation.     But  they 
much    excelled    both    Kolarians    and    Dravidians    in    their 
breadth  of  view.     Their  leading  characteristics  were  fervid 
eloquence,   richness   of    imagination,   fertility   of    resource, 
earnestness   in   the  pursuit  of  the  object   they  wished    to 
obtain,  coupled  with  a  tendency  to  be  not  too  scrupulous 
as  to  the  means  used  to  gain  their  ends.     Their  love  of 
knowledge  for  its  own  sake  was  shown  in  the  extension  of 
their  inquiries  far  beyond  the  limits  of  the  visible  world  and 
the  requirements  of  everyday  life.      They  were  proud  of 
their  families  and  kinsfolk,  and  determined  to  preserve  them 
from  contamination  with  those  they  looked  on  as  inferior 
races,  and  hence  they  introduced  into  some  countries,  but 
not  into  India,  the  custom  of  marrying  their  own  sisters, 
which  was  the  rule  among  the  Persian  and  Egyptian  kings, 
after  the  control  of  the  government  of  these  countries  had 
passed  into  Aryan  hands.      They  were   also  filled  with  a 
vivid  sense  of  their  own  superiority  and  right  to  rule.     In 
the  higher  Aryan  minds  the  force  of  their  imagination  was 
tempered  by  a  ripe  judgment,  their  eageniess  for  success  by 
a  strong  tenacity  of  purpose,  and  their  audacity  of  specula- 
tion by  religious  reverence  and  moral  earnestness.     To  them 
the  ruler  of  heaven  Avas  the  sun  which  warmed  the  earth  in 
their  cold  northern  home,  and  he  was  the  Dyaus-pitar,  the 


106  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

father  of  the  bright  sky  of  the  Rigveda,  the  Zeus  of  the 
Greeks,  aiid  the  Jupiter  of  the  Romans,  who  was  also  wor- 
shipped as  Savitar  by  the  Hindus,  and  as  Savul  or  Sawul  by 
the  Babylonians ;  ^  and  both  these  names  contain  the  same 
radical  syllable  saVy  formed  from  the  root  «/,  to  beget, 
common  to  both  the  Akkadian  and  Indian  Dravido-Tur- 
anian  languages.  He  took  the  place  of  the  moon-god 
Kronos  of  the  Greeks,  armed  with  the  lunar  sickle,  and  of  the 
Ouranos  of  the  Greeks,  the  dark  Varuna,  the  heaven  of  rain 
(par)  and  night  of  the  Hindus ;  and  his  worshippers  looked 
on  the  doctrine  of  the  matriarchal  tribes,  that  the  earth  was 
by  its  own  inherent  vital  force  the  mother  of  all  things,  as  a 
deadly  and  debasing  heresy. 

Though  the  Aryans  were  a  fighting  race,  they  were  also, 
when  at  peace,  chiefly  a  pastoral  people ;  and  it  was  as  a 
race  of  cattle  herdsmen  that  they  apparently  entered  India, 
which  they  found  to  be  a  country  answering  to  the  ideal  Aryan- 
land,  described  in  the  Institutes  of  Vishnu  as  that '  contain- 
ing open  plains  fit  for  cattle  and  abounding  in  grain,  and 
inhabited  by  many  Vaisyas  and  Sudras,"*-  that  is  to  say,  by 
agriculturists,  and  artisans  living  in  villages,  and  labourers. 
These  they  despised,  as  they  did  all  who  lived  by  trade  and 
manual  labour ;  but  were  quite  ready  to  profit  by  them  as 
obedient  subjects  and  useful  servants.  Their  special  aversion 
were  the  trading  races,  whom  they  called  Panis,  and  who 
are  shown  to  be  non-Aryan  in  speech,  by  the  epithet  they 
applied  to  their  language,  and  to  that  of  the  great  ruling 
and  city-building  race  of  the  Purus,  for  they  called  them 
Mridhraviic,  that  is,  the  people  who  speak  softly,*  and  this 
phra.se  describes  the  impression  which  was  made  by  the  open 
sounds  of  the  Tamil  or  Dravidian  dialects  on  Aryan  ears 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  I^ct.  i.  p.  55. 

2  Jolly  Institutes  of  Vishnu y  iii.  4,  5  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  vii.  p.  14. 

'  This  is  Yaska's  interpretation  of  the  epithet  which  is  applied  to  the 
speech  of  the  Panis  in  Rigvcda  vii.  6,  3,  to  that  of  the  Purus  in  Rigveda, 
vii.  18,  13  ;  and  also  to  the  speech  of  the  native  races  generally  in  Rigveda, 
i.  174,2;  V.  32,  8,  X.  23,  5. 


ESSAY  II  107 

accustomed  to  the  hard  gutturals,  aspirates,  and  double 
letters  of  their  mother-tongue.  In  the  same  hymn  in  which 
the  Panis  are  said  to  be  Mridhravac,  they  are  also  described 
lis  men  without  belief,  understanding  or  education,  who  give 
no  offerings,  and  are  identified  with  the  Nahushas  or  sons  of 
the  Niiga,  for  tlie  writer  of  the  liymn  praises  Agni  for 
having,  by  reducing  the  Nahushas  to  be  payers  of  tribute, 
made  the  Aryan  women  mothers  of  the  dawn  {ushas\^  that 
is,  made  them  the  mothers  of  the  rulers  of  the  Eastern  land 
of  the  dawn.  These  Nahushas  were  the  race  called  Varsha- 
^rus,  the  possessors  of  rain  {varsha)^  whose  priest  was 
Kutsa,^  the  Vedic  hero,  father  of  the  Purus,*  rulers  of  Eastern 
India,  and  brother  of  Indra,  ^  and  whose  ritual  was  that  of 
the  Angiras,  or  offerers  of  burnt-offerings.*  They  stigma- 
tised these  people  as  black  (Arw/ma),  and  by  this  epithet, 
and  that  of  anaso  or  noseless,  they  marked  them  as  a  people 
of  non- Aryan  race,  and,  therefore,  as  speakers  of  a  non-Aryan 
tongue,  and  denounced  their  gods,  the  Linga  and  Yoni,  as 
phallic  gods  (shishna-deva)J  But  they  did  not  include 
among  the  gods  denounced  by  this  epithet  the  spiritual  god 
worshipped  by  the  Asuras,  whose  supreme  god,  the  Naga  or 
fish-god,  was  the  emblem  of  the  being  dwelling  in  his  shrine 
of  clouds  and  mist,  which  hid  from  mortal  view  the  great  Naga 
or  soul  of  life,  whose  home  was  the  firmament  of  the  waters 
of  the  heavens,  made  creative  by  his  spirit.  It  is  his  wor- 
shippers, however,  who  are  rightly  described  by  the  epithet 
of  Asunvant,  meaning  those  who  do  not  press  Soma,  used  to 
designate  the  Panis,®  for  they  who  were  water-drinkers  had 
given  up  the  use  of  the  intoxicating  Soma  made  from  honey 
and  the  flowers  of  the  Mahua  tree  by  the  Dravidian  star- 

•  Rigveda,  vii.  6,  3,  and  5.  -  flu'tf.  i.  100,  16,  17. 

•  Idiif,  vii.  25,  5.  *  //n'd.  vi.  20,  lo ;  i.  174,  2. 

•  Idtd,  ii.  19,  6. 

•  /did,  i.  107,  2,     See  Ludwig,  Kigveda^  vol.  ill.  p.  113. 

'  Rigveda,  x.  27,  19;  x.  99,  3 ;  vii.  21,  5.     Zimmer,  Aitittdisches  Lehen, 
p.  116. 

•  Rigveda,  iv.  25,  7. 


108  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

worshippers,  and  offered  instead  libations  of  milk,  curds,  and 
whey,  the  products  of  the  mother-cow,  and  pure  running 
water  called  dhara^  or  the  stream  of  living  water,  in  the 
Rigveda.  This  was  the  water  sanctified  by  the  god  Darhi 
or  Dharti,  the  god  of  springs,  worshipped  as  the  supreme 
god  by  all  Dravidian  tribes,  and  more  especially  by  the 
great  race  of  the  Cheroos,  who  are  still  a  powerful  tribe  in 
Behar  and  Palamow,  and  who,  according  to  universal  native 
tradition,  once  ruled  the  whole  of  North-eastern  India. 
They  are  also  one  of  the  three  great  Tamil  or  Dravidian 
tribes  called  Cheroos,  Cholas  and  Pandyas,  the  Dri-dasya 
of  the  M ahabharata,  the  sons  of  the  star  Agastya  (Canopus) 
and  Lopa-mudra,  the  northern  fox  (lopasha\  the  precursors 
of  the  dawn,^  the  two  foxes  {liari)  who  drew  the  car  of 
Indra  in  the  Rigveda.*  It  is  these  Cheroos  who  still  hold 
their  great  annual  festival  in  Aghan  at  the  time  of  the 
winter  solstice,  when  the  lunar  year  of  the  moon-worsliippers 
began.*  This  stem  and  colourless  worship,  which  formed  the 
ritual  of  the  Puritans  of  the  ancient  world,  the  moon- wor- 
shipping Pandyas,  the  successors  of  the  earlier  Cheroos,  was 
utterly  distasteful  to  the  Aryan  invaders.  These  last  are 
called  in  the  Rigveda  Tritsu,  that  is,  the  *  boring  "*  (trid) 
people,  the  people  who  used  the  rotating  fire-drill ;  and  they 
are  also  called  Arna,  which  means  the  sons  of  Arani,  the 
fire-drill.  Apparently  the  earliest  mention  of  them  is  in 
Rigveda  iv.  30,  18,  where  the  Aryan  Arna  and  Chitra-ratha, 
that  is,  as  I  have  shown  before  in  this  Essay  in  describing  the 
Pandavas,  the  race  who  looked  on  the  moon  and  planets  as 
the  measurers  of  time,  are  said  to  have  been  defeated  on  the 
Sarayu  or  Sutlej  by  the  Yadu-turvashu,  who  still  rule  that 
part  of  the  country  as  the  Yaudheya  Rajputs,  and  who  were 
the  ruling  races  of  the  Naga  or  Nahusha  kingdom.  These 
Tritsus,  the  allied  Arna  and  Chitra-ratha,  were  fire-worship- 

^  Mahabharata  Vana  {Tirtha-Yaira)  Parva,  xcvi-xcviii.  pp.  307-314. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  5,  4,  6,  2,  and  many  other  places. 

'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  p.  212. 


ESSAY  II  109 

pers,  for  their  king  Su-das,  the  giver  (das)  of  Su  or  living 
energy,  is  said  to  be  the  son  of,  that  is,  in  mythological 
language,  the  successor  of  Divodusa,  and  Divodasa  is,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  in.,  the  fire-god  who  was  conquered  by  Su- 
shravas,  the  emanation  or  glory  of  the  trading  Sus.^  The 
priest  of  the  Tritsus  was  Vashishtha,  the  most  creating  (vasu) 
fire,  the  fire  called  in  the  Rigveda  Narasharnsa,  the  son 
of  the  first  sacrificial  fire,  Nabha-nedishtha,^  that  which  is 
nearest  to  the  navel  {iiabha) ;  and  in  the  Zendavesta  Nairyo 
Sangha,  who  dwells  in  the  navel  of  kings,^  the  Vahram  fire 
of  the  Bundahish,  which  burns  continually  in  the  temples.* 
Thus  the  coming  of  the  Tptsus  like  the  Greek  return  of  the 
Heraclidoe  meant  a  return  of  the  fire-worshippers,  who  had 
originally  in  the  dawn  of  civilisation  spread  themselves  over 
the  earth  as  the  Phlegyes  or  Bhrigus,  the  magicians,  the 
sons  of  the  mother  Maga,  who  had  introduced  the  religion 
of  witchcraft,  spells,  omens,  and  incantations  ;  and  had  thus 
laid  the  foundations  of  religious  ritual  in  India,  South- 
western Asia,  and  Egypt.  These  people  had  also,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  in.,  brought  with  them  the  Agni  Vaishvanara  or 
household  fire.  But  when  this  religion  had  become  a  tissue 
of  baleful  superstitions,  which  peopled  space  with  malicious 
spirits,  and  made  every  one  suspicious  that  their  neighbours 
might  bewitch  them,  the  sons  of  Maga  revolted  against  the 
rule  of  the  gods,  who  made  their  lives  burdensome  by  never- 
ceasing  fears  and  terrors — found  out  that  the  god  of  heaven, 
the  rain-god,  was  mightier  than  the  evil  spirits,  and  enrolled 
themselves  as  his  worshippers.  He  was  the  lord  of  law  and 
order,  who  directed  the  succession  of  natural  phenomena  by 
unchangeable  and  enduring  laws,  the  mighty  spirit  who  buried 
the  lawless  fire-gods,  the  Cyclopes,  beneath  the  earth,  and 

1  Rigveda,  1.  53,  9,  10. 

«  Ibid.  X.  61  and  62;   Haug's  Ait.  Brah.  v.  2,   14;   voU  ii     pp.  34 

342. 
'  Danneshter,  Zendavesta  Sirozah,  i.  9 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  8. 

*  West,  Bundahish,  xvii.  I ;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  p.  62. 


no  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

protected  his  children  against  the  malice  of  the  wicked  spirits. 
The  twin  races,  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  inaugurated 
this  creed  in  India,  were  the  Yadu-Turvashu,  and  it  was 
they  who  finally,  as  the  Som-bunsi,  or  sons  of  the  moon,  led 
by  the  god  called  Vishva-mitra,  had  changed  the  ancient 
ritual  of  music  and  dances  into  the  silent  worship  prescribed 
in  the  Brahmanas  as  that  of  Praja-pati,  the  lord  (pati)  of 
former  (pro)  generations  (Ja)  called  the  great  Ka;  ^  but  this, 
though  performed  with  elaborate  and  significant  rites,  was, 
to  those  who  were  not  filled  with  spiritual  enthusiasm,  tedious 
and  lifeless.     It  was  against  the  formalism  of  this  spiritual 
religion,  and  the  tyranny  of  its  priests  and  rulers,  that  the 
national  mind  in  India  revolted  ;  and  this  revolt,  led  by  the 
Tritsus,  was  the  war  between  the  followers  of  Vishva-mitra 
and  Vashishtha,  called  in  the  Rigveda  the  war  of  the  ten 
kings.     They  had  settled  in  the  land  watered  by  the  Indian 
Sarasvati   and  Drishadvati,  which   henceforth   became  the 
sacred  Aryan  land ;  but  they  were  at  first  a  people  of  little 
political  influence,  and  when  the  historical  legends  which 
expanded   into   the   Mahabharata   were   formed,   they    are 
spoken  of  as  the  tribes  of  the  Sarasvatas,  who  fought  on  the 
side  of  the  defeated   Kauravyas,  and  formed  part  of  the 
division  led  by  Uluka,  the  owl,  the  son  of  Shakuna,  the  kite, 
the  brother  of  Gandhuri,  who   laid    the   egg,  whence  the 
Kauravyas  were  born.     They  were  defeated  by  the  Pandavas 
under  Sahadeva  and  Nakula,  the  twin  sons  of  the  Ashvins,  or 
heavenly  twins.^     But  though  at  first  politically  insignifi- 
cant, their  prowess  as  warriors,  diplomatic  ability,  religious 
earnestness,   and   their   poetry  and   songs,  soon   made  the 
Tritsus  a  power  in  the  land.     The  first  traces  of  Jainism 
had  already,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  begun  to  manifest  them- 
selves among  the  Su-varna   traders  of  the  West,  and  the 

1  Eggeling,  Sat,  BrdA.,  i,  4,  4»  5  5  i-  4i  5»  12 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xir.  pp.   125- 
131. 

2  Udyoga  ( l^ana  sandht)  Parva,  Ivi.  p.  202 ;  Shalya  {Shalya-badka)  Parva, 
xxviii.  pp.  I06-I07. 


ESSAY  II  111 

Indian  people  generally  were  interested  in  religious  reform, 
and  were  glad  to  welcome  the  Aryan  priests,  who,  as  the 
Ud-gatris  or  reciters,  made  religious  ceremonies,  accompanied 
by  their  songs  and  chanted  hymns,  more  generally  interest- 
ing than  the  silent  services  of  the  Semitic  moon- worshippers. 
But  their  best  aid  in  the  entire  conquest  of  the  land,  which 
the   Aryans   ultimately  effected,   was   their    political    and 
trading  ability.     It  was  by  this  that  they  secured  to  them- 
selves  substantial  power  as  advisers  to  Dravidian  princes, 
and  family  influence  as  trainers  of  the  young.     For  among 
a  people  who  attached,  as  the  Uravidians  did,  the  greatest 
importance  to  education,  teachers  so  able  as  those  whom 
the  Aryans  could  supply,  were  eagerly  sought  for ;  and  it 
was  these  teachers  who  changed  the  national  speech  from 
Dravidian  and   Turanian   agglutinative    languages   to   in- 
flexional Aryan  dialects.     It  was  they  also  wlio  changed  the 
system  of  trade-guilds  and  craft-schools  formed  under  the 
Kushite  government  for  preser\'ing  and  adding  to  the  know- 
ledge necessary  for  the  continuance  and  advancement  of  the 
crafts  of  the  country,  into  family  circles,  in  which  every  one 
remained  through  life  a  member  of  the  caste  in  wliich  he  was 
bom,  instead  of  being,  as  people  were  in  Kushite  times,  free 
to  enter  any  other  caste   to  whicli   their   inclinations  led 
them,  if  they  could,  as  in  the  ancient  village,  secure  the  con- 
sent of  the  members  of  the  guild  to  their  admittance.    Thus 
this  Aryan  family  system  had  its  roots  in  the  old  customs 
of  the  country,  and  under  it  the  caste  or  perpetual  league 
of  families,   within    which    its  members  could   marry,   was 
substituted  for  the  old  tribal  confederacy  described  in  Essay 
III.,  to  whose  members  the  right  of  becoming  the  fathers  of 
the  legally  recognised  children  of  the  State  was  restricted ; 
and  in  these  caste  inter- marriages  the  old  law  of  exogamy 
which  forbade  a  man  to  be  the  father  of  the  children  of  the 
women  in  his  own  village,  was  reproduced  in  the  laws  of 
caste  exogamy,  forbidding  marriage  between  those  who  were 
nearly  related.     But  thi$  family  organisation  became,  in  the 


112  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

hands  of  Aryan  administrators,  a  means  of  increasing  the 
royal  and  priestly  power,  and  of  diverting  the  minds  of  the 
people  from  disturbing  questions  of  national  polity  to  those 
connected  with  internal  social  arrangements.     Under   this 
system  the  priests  and  warriors  were  placed  at  the  head  of 
the  social  scale ;  and  the  chief  adviser  and  real  ruler  of  the 
king  was  his  Purohit,  or  family  priest,  who  was  the  conse- 
crated form  of  the  old  Aryan  bard  of  the  clan.     It  was  this 
national  family  priest  or  clan-bard  who  is  idealised  among 
the  Vedic  bards  as  Vashishtha ;  and  it  is  in  the  poems  of 
the  seventh  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda,   the   authorship  of 
which  is  ascribed  to  him  and  his  family,  that  we  find  the 
later  Aryan    recension    of    the    original     battle  -  song    of 
triumph,  in  which  the  Tritsu  bard  told  of  the  victory  of  his 
tril)e,  the  sun  and  fire-worshippers,  over  Vishva-mitra  and 
the  Bharata,  the  sons  of  the  moon  and  worshippers  of  the 
great  Naga  or  water-god.      Tlie  story  of  the  war,  which 
ended  in  this  complete  victory  of  the  lYitsus,  is  told  in  the 
Rigveda  in  three  hymns  by  the   Vashishtha  bards  (Rigveda 
vii.   18,  33,  1-6  and  83),  and  in  one  of  the  Vishva-mitra 
hymns  (Rigveda  iii.  33) ;  and  from  these  poems,  and  espe- 
cially from  the  list  of   the   tribes   forming   the   opposing 
armies,  it  is  possible  to  reproduce  a  picture  of  the  politicid 
state  of  ancient  India  at  the  time  when  the  Aryans  became 
rulers  of  the  land  which  had  hitherto  been  called  Bhai-ata- 
varsha,  or  the  land  of  the  Dravidian  Bharatas,  the  five  races 
descended  from    the  five  sons  of  Yayati,  whose  history  I 
have  sketched  in  Essay  iii.    In  the  83rd  hymn  of  the  seventh 
Mandala,  the  tribes  under  the  immediate  rule  of  Sudas,  the 
Tritsu  king,  are  called  Pritha-Parshu ;  and  the  Prithus  are 
the  sons  of  the  earth  and  sun-mother  Prithu,  who  is,  in  the 
Mahabharata,   the  mother  of  the   Pandavas.      They,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  iii.,  were  the  people  called  in  the  Rigveda 
Parthava,^  who,  as  the  Pandavas  by  their  union  with  Dru- 
padi,  the  daughter  of  Drupada,  king  of  the  Paiichalas,  had 

*  Rigveda,  vi.  27,  8. 


ESSAY  II  113 

become  the  rulers  of  the  country  between  the  Jumna  and 
Granges,  known  as  the  land  of  the  Pailchalas  or  Srinjayas, 
the  sons  of  the  sickle  (srini).     As  Drupadl  was,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  iii.,  the  altar  of  incense,  these  people  were  also,  like 
the  Aryans,  fire- worshippers,  and,  therefore,  the  natural  allies 
of  the  tribe  called  in  this  hymn  the  Parshu  or  Parshava  or 
Persians,  the  modem  Parsis,  whose  symbol  of  God  is  the 
ever-burning  fire,  never  extinguished  in  their  temples.     It  is 
these  allied  tribes  called  the  Pafichulas  or  the  five-  (pafich) 
clawed  (aid)  Naga  snakes,  the  worshippers  of  the  year-god 
who  rules  the  year  of  five  seasons,  who,  in  the  Mahabharata 
version  of  this  war,  are  described  as  attacking  the  king  Sam- 
varana,  whose  name  means  the  collection  {sam)  of  tribes 
{varna\  and   driving   him   and  the  Bharatas  back  to  the 
Indus.^     The  northern  frontier  of  the  land,  ruled  before  the 
war  by  these  united  Prithu  and  Parshu  called  the  Pailchalas, 
was    the    plain    country    watered    by    the    Saras vatl    and 
Drishadvatl ;  and  their  neighbours  on  the  North,  who  lived 
on  the  banks  of  the  Bias  and  Sutlej,  were  the  Tugra  or 
Trigarta,  who  are  now  known  as  the  Takkas ;  and  they,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  in.,  were  the  Gond  tribe  called  Koi-kopal  or  cow- 
keepers,  who  were  great  drinkers  of  spirits,  and  belonged  to 
the  circle  of  the  early  fire-worshipping  tribes.    Tlie  Bharatas, 
the  foes  of  the  Pailchalas,  were  encamped  to  the  north  of 
the  Tugra  country,  on  the  Ravi  or  Parushni,  and  had  there 
collected  a  large  army  of  their  confederates  with  the  inten- 
tion, as   appears   from   Vishvamitra'^s  hymn,    of    marching 
thence  to   attack   the  UYitsu   in   their   own  land,   for  he 
prays  the  Vipash  (Bias)  and  Shutudrl  (Sutlej)  to  give  an 
easy    passage    to    the    Bharata    forces.      But    the    Tritsu 
anticipated    them   in   their   policy,   and    allied   themselves 
with    the    Tugra,     who    are     called    by    Vashishtha    the 
Shiva,   a  generic   name   of  all    the   cattle  -  herding   races, 
whose    father-god    was     Shiva,     the    son     of     Ushi-nara, 
the  hero  {nara)  of  the  dawn  or  East  {ushi)  called  in   the 
^  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sambhava)  Parva,  xciv.  p.  280. 

8 


d 


114  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Mahabharata,  the  king  of  the  Bhojas,  a  name  still  applied 
to  the  cattle-herding  tribes  collectively.  The  forces  that 
marched  with  Sudas  through  the  Shiva  country  were  made 
up  according  to  the  list  given  in  Vashishtha'^s  battle-hymn 
(Rigveda,  vii.  18)  (1)  of  the  Tritsus,  otherwise  called  the 
Parsha  or  Parshava,  (2)  the  Paktha(3)  Alinas,  (4)  Bhalanas,  (5) 
Vishanin,  and  (6)  Shiva.  Of  these  the  Paktha  were,  as  Zimmer 
shows,  the  people  called  by  Herodotus  Ila/CTUC?,  whose  capital 
was  Kaspapeiros  or  M ultan,  the  name  having  been  changed 
from  that  of  Malli-tana  or  place  of  the  Mallis,  to  Kushya- 
pura,  the  city  of  Kashyapa,  the  father  of  the  tortoise 
races.^  They  were  the  Parthava,  named  as  the  allies  of  the 
Tritsu,  in  the  phrase  Prithu-Parshu.  The  Shiva  were,  as  I 
have  shown,  theTugra ;  and  the  Vishanin  must  have  been  the 
people  of  Muttra,  the  worshippers  of  Vishnu,  the  bull-god, 
known  to  the  authors  of  the  Mahabharata,  to  Arrian  and 
M anu,  as  the  Shura-sena,  or  army  of  heroes,'^  whose  daughter 
TapatI,  the  blazing  flame,  Samvarana,  the  defeated  king  of 
the  Bharatas,  married  after  the  war.^  Tlie  Alinas  and 
Bhalanas  I  am  unable  to  identify.  Tlie  Bharata  forces 
opposed  to  the  Tritsu  army  of  cattle-herdsmen  comprised  the 

(1)  Tui'vashu,  or  star- worshippers  of  the  Tur  or  meridian  pole, 
under  their  leader  Yakshu,  which  means  the  shooting  star. 

(2)  The  Matsya.  the  sons  of  the  fish-god  {Matsya)^  who  was, 
as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  the  Supreme  Deity,  called  Yah  by  the 
Hindus,  la  by  the  Akkadians,  Assor  by  the  Assyrians, 
Yahveh  by  the  Jews,  and  Dagan,  or  the  revered  one,  by  the 
Phoenicians.  (3)  The  Bhrigu,  or  worshippers  of  the  earthly 
fire,  the  earliest  priests  of  the  fire-god.  (4) The  Druhyu,or  sor- 
cerers (druh),  (5  and  6)  The  Vai-karna  or  two-  (vi)  horned 
(karna)  people,  whose  country,  Vikarnika,  is  identified  by 

'  Zimmer,  Altindtschfs  Lebtrty  p.  434.  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography 
of  Indiay  p.  232.     Sachau*s  Alberuni's  India^  chap.  xxix.  vol.  i.  p.  298. 

'  Mahabharata  Sabha  {Raja  suyarambha)  Parva,  xiv.  pp.  46,  47.  Arrian 
Indika,  chap.  xvii.  BUhler's  Manu^  ii.  19,  vii.  193;  S.13.E.,  vol.  xxvw  pp. 
32,  247. 

'  Adi  {^Sambhava)  Parva,  xciv,  p.  28(X 


ESSAY  II  115 

Hema  Chandra  with  Kashmir,  which  has  been  known  from 
time  immemorial  cls  the  land  of  the  snake-gods,  tliat  is,  of 
the  two  snakes,  the  guardian -snake  of  the  village,  the  Greek 
ex*?,  the  Sanskrit  Ahiy  and  the  rain-snake  Naga.    Their  god 
Karna  is,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  the  horned-moon,  and  they 
were  thus  the  moon-worshippers.    Their  leader  Kavasha,  the 
wise  (Kavi\  is  named  with  the  Turvashu  Yakshu,  as  the  two 
generals  of  the   Bharata   army.    (7)  The   Anu,   or   people 
who  worshipped  the  village  gods  {ana),    (8)  The  Purus,  the 
rulers  of  the  East,  descended  from  Puru,  who,  though  the 
youngest  of  Yayati'^s  sons,  ruled,  according  to  the  Maha- 
bharata,  all  his  brethren  and  their  descendants.     (9)  The 
Ajas,  or  sons  of  the  goat  {qja\  and  (10)  the  Chigru,  whom  I 
am  unable  to  identify.     They  were,  in  short,  the  collective 
people  of  the  five  races  who  claimed  to  be  descended  from 
the  sons  of  Yayati,  Yadu,  Turvashu,  Druhyu,  Anu,  and  Puru, 
the  trading  tribes  or  Panis,  the  worshippers  of  the  moon 
and  stars,  and  of  their  creator  whose  symbol  was  the  fish. 
But  this  hymn,  like  all  other  ancient  historical  myths,  was 
constructed  according  to  the  rules  of  mythic  history,  and 
as  the  story  it  tells  was  the  substitution  of  a  new  for  an  old 
ruling  race,  the  old  race  is  indicated  by  the  number  ten, 
the  number  of  the  tribes  of  the  Bharata  army,  or  of  the  lunar 
months  of  gestation,  which  were  to  produce  the  fathers  of  the 
new  confederacy  of  the  six  tribes  which  formed  the  Tritsu 
army.     These  latter  thus  succeeded  their   predecessors  as 
their  natural  descendants,  bom  in  the  fulness  of  time,  and 
substituted  for  the  lunar  year  of  five  seasons  recognised  by  the 
moon-worshippers,  the  solar  year  of  twelve  months,  divided, 
as  it  is  by  Hindu  astronomers,  into  the  six  ritu  or  seasons 
of  two  months  each,  which  also  appear  in  the  six  Zend  seasons 
of  the  Yasna,  Visparads,  and  Afri  Nagan,  called  (1)  Maidyo- 
Zaremaya,  the  milk-giver  ;   (2)  Maidyo-shema,  the  pasture- 
giver  ;  (3)  Paitishahya,  the  corn-giver ;  (4?)  Ayathrima  the 
breeder  or  autumn  season  sacred  to  the  Fathers  ;  (5)  Maidhy- 
airya,  the  cold  season  ;  (6)  Hamaspath  Maedhaya,  the  special 


116  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

time  for  ritual  deeds  ;^  and  by  this  division  as  well  as  by  the 
six  offerings  made  to  the  oldest  class  of  fathers,  called  the 
Pitarah  Somavantalj,^  the  eaters  of  rice,  they  marked  them- 
selves as  successors  in  the  evolution  of  time  of  the  first  tillers 
of  the  soil  who  formed  organised  agricultural  communities. 
It  was  against  the  confederated  forces  of  the  kings  of  the 
dying  age  that  Sudas  led  his  forces,  and  though  Vashishtha^s 
hymn,  giving  an  account  of  the  battle  written  in  an  Aryan 
metre  and  in  the  Dravidian  Sanskrit  tongue  formed  after 
the  interfusion  of  the  two  races,  cannot  possibly  be  the 
original  battle-hymn  of  the  Tritsu  bard,  it  is  so  vivid  in  its 
details  as  to  make  it  almost  certain  that  it  is  a  mythic  his- 
tory, written  when  the  didactic  historical  tale  began  to  give 
place  to  the  personal  narrative,  and  that  the  bard  who  wrote 
the  hymn  which  has  come  down  to  us  had  before  him  when 
composing  it  the  war-song  made  by  the  contemporary  poet 
who,  like  Taillefer,  the  herald-bard,  who  described  the  battle 
of  Hastings  in  the  Roman  de  Rou,  marched  before  and 
with  his  countrymen  as  they  attacked  the  enemy.  It  tells 
clearly  how  Sudas,  by  Indra'^s  help,  crossed  the  rivers  lying 
between  him  and  the  Bhurata  forces,  and  gives  a  most 
graphic  description  of  the  surprise  caused  by  their  coming; 
for  it  was  only  a  people  who  were  flurried  and  confused  by 
the  unexpected  appearance  of  the  enemy  who  could  have 
acted  as  the  Bharata  are  said  to  have  done,  and  tried  to  cross 
the  river  without  finding  whether  it  was  then  fordable  or  not. 
But  the  Turvashu  under  Yakshu  were  too  much  angered  by 
the  insolence  of  their  foes  to  think  of  these  precautions,  and 
plunged  into  the  Parushni,  '  thinking,  fools  as  they  were, 
to  cross  it  as  easily  as  on  dry  land,  but  the  Lord  of  the  Earth 
(Prithivi),  the  father-god  of  the  Parthavas,  '  seized  them  in 
his  might,  and  herds  and  herdsmen  were  destroyed/  They 
could  not,  according  to  Sayana^s  interpretation,  bring  their 

^  Mill's   Visparady  i.   2;   Yasna,  i.  9;  Afrt  Nagdn,  i.  7-12;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxxi.  pp.  198,  335,  369-370. 
^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  ii.  6,  1,4;  S.B.E.  voh  xii«  p^  421. 


ESSAY  II  117 

horses  and  chariots  into  action  owing  to  the  violence  of  the 
current,  and  those  who  gained  the  other  side  landed  in  con- 
fusion, *  like  herds  without  a  herdsmen.**  ^     They  were  there- 
fore easily  and  completely  routed  by  Sudas,  who  did  not 
delay  to  follow  up  his  success,  but  crossed  the  river  and 
stormed  the  strongholds  of  the  enemy,  took  their  seven  cities 
(the  use  of  the  number  seven  being  a  mythical  method  of 
stating  their  utter  defeat),  divided  the  goods  of  the  Anu 
among  the  Tritsus,  conquered  the  ruling  Purus,  the  men  of 
soft  Dravidian  speech  {mridhravac\  and  made  the  Turvasus, 
Ajas,  and  Chigrus  pay  tribute.^     The  result  of  this  battle, 
in  which,  according  to  another  hymn  of  Vashishtha'^s  Man- 
dala,^  the  Tritsus  drove  the  weak  Bharata  before  them  as 
oxen,  is  told  in  the  Mahabharata,  and  illustrates  the  poli- 
tical genius  of  the  Aryans,  for  after  their  victory  they  allied 
themselves  with  Samvarana,  the  Puru  king,  who  made  Vashi- 
shtha  his  spiritual  guide,  and  married  Tapati,  the  burning 
flame,  or  the  perpetual  fire  oh  the  altar,  who  is  called  in  one 
genealogy  the  daughter  of  the  Shura-sena,  and  in  another 
of  Vivasvat,  the  author  of  light,  and,  therefore,  the  sun-god. 
It  was  then  that  they  restored  Agni  the  fire-god  to  the  place 
of  the  chief-god,  which  he  occupies  in  the  Rigveda,  changed 
the  rain -god  ©f  the  old  regime,  called  Shukra,  or  the  wet- 
god  {8uk\  or  the  god  of  the  rainy  season,  into  Indra,  the 
rain-god  of  the  Indu,  meaning  the  drop  or  ultimate  atom  of 
life-giving  water,  impregnated  by  tlie  creating  spirit,  and 
made  the  national  worship,  not  a  series  of  silent  and  pomp- 
ous   sacrifices,    but    one    accompanied    by    loudly-chanted 
hymns  of  praise   and   invocation.     It    was   the   class   who 
superintended  the  ritual,  instruction,  and  policy  of  the  king- 
dom, who  were  placed  at  the  head  of  the  caste-system,  but 
the  formation  of  the  Brahmin  caste,  and  their  social  ordi- 
nances show  that,  in  forming  it,  the  Aryan  administrators 
had  taken  care  to  include  in  it  the  descendants  of  all  previ- 

1  Rigveda,  vu.  i8,  6-io.  2  /3,v/.  vii.  18,  13-19. 

5  Ibid,  vii.  33,  1-6. 


118  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

ous  national  priesthoods,  and,  in  like  manner,  all  ruling- 
warrior  tribes  were  included  among  the  Kshatriyas;  and  it  was 
this  astute  reverence  for  national  tradition  and  usage  which 
made  them  preserve  in  the  ritual  the  distinct  evidence  of  the 
religious  supremacy  of  the  trading-races,  shown  in  the  rule 
which  required  that  the  house-pole  in  the  Sadas,  or  house  of 
the  gods  and  priests  in  the  sacrificial  ground  should  be  made 
of  Udumbara  wood  (Fiat^  glomeratd)^  and  that  the  throne 
of  Soma,2  and  the  staff  given  after  his  baptismal  consecration 
to  the  sacrificer,  should  be  made  of  the  same  wood.^  For  the 
Udumbara-tree  is,  as  I  show  in  Essay  ni.,  the  sacred  father- 
tree  of  the  trading  race  of  Shus  or  Saus,  of  which  the  staff' 
of  the  Vaishya  student  must  be  made.*  They  also  formed, 
both  the  Sanskrit  language  by  the  intermixture  of  the  Dra- 
vidian  cerebral  letters,  and  the  Prakrit  and  Pali  colloquial 
dialects,  which  show  by  the  use  of  more  numerous  words  of 
Turano-Grondian,  Dravidian,  and  Kolarian  origin,  a  much 
closer  affinity  with  these  tongues  than  appears  in  the  Vedic 
Sanskrit. 

But  the  changes  introduced  by  Aryan  influence  did  not 
stop  with  the  manipulation  of  castes,  and  the  national  ritual 
and  religious  belief,  but  it  also  extended  to  all  questions  con- 
nected with  property  and  the  distribution  of  land.  As  to 
the  first,  it  was  under  their  guidance  that  the  native  codes, 
such  as  the  Mitakshara  and  Dhyabhaga  were  framed,  which 
recognise  the  family  and  individual  as  the  distributors  and 
originators  of  property,  while  their  influence  on  landed  pro- 
perty is  shown  in  their  treatment  of  the  Dravidian  or  Naga 
village. 

In  an  Aryan  village  formed  on  the  model  of  the  batter-* 
schqft  or  bratsvOy  there  were,  besides  the  hereditary  head- 
man, no  public  officers  forming  part  of  the  community,  or  no 

^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  iii.  6.  I.  2. ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi,  p.  141. 
^  Ibid,  iii.  3.  iv.  28.,  ibid,  p.  84.  '  Ibid,  iii.  2.  I.  33.,  ibid.  p.  34. 

■*  Buhler,  Apastamba^  i.  i.  ii.  38;  Manu,  ii,  45.  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  ii.  p.  9  ; 
XXV.  p.  38. 


ESSAY  II  119 

village  servants,  as  all  the  duties  of  the  former  were  dis- 
charged by  persons  chosen  from  among  the  brotherhood, 
while  those  which  were  thought  to  be  menial  were  done 
either  by  each  family  for  themselves,  or  by  the  help  of  hired 
or  slave  servants,  and  hence  the  Sudras  of  the  Aryan  caste- 
system,  to  whom  these  duties  were  assigned,  were  regarded  as 
a  people  of  altogether  inferior  origin. 

When  these  Aryans  took  land  in  a  settled  Dravidian 
village,  they  were  ready  to  become  village  headmen,  as  this 
office  corresponded  with  the  headship  of  their  own  sabhd^ 
and  only  bound  them  to  act,  like  the  Kolarian  munda^  as 
chief  ruler  and  arbitrator  in  disputes.  As  they  looked  on 
literary  work  of  all  kinds  as  honourable,  they  were  also  ready 
to  become  accountants  and  collectors  of  the  revenue.  Con- 
sequently in  a  village  ruled  by  Aryans,  the  patel^  or  headman, 
to  whom  the  royal  land  was  assigned  as  his  appanage,  and 
the  accountant  remained  the  chief  village  officers,  while  the 
village  lands  were  divided  into  defined  allotments,  each  of 
which  was  assigned  as  the  property  of  a  cultivating  family. 
The  village  priest,  if  he  was  retained  at  all,  which  was  very 
seldom,  was  given  a  very  subordinate  position  among  the 
meaner  officials.  But  while  the  power  of  the  village  officers 
was  diminished,  that  of  the  high-caste  householders  owning 
village-lands  was  increased,  as  they  formed,  with  the  headman, 
the  village  council.  But  these  householders,  instead  of  giving 
personal  service,  or  assisting  in  the  cultivation  of  the  royal 
land,  paid  their  share  of  such  contributions  as  the  village 
was  required  to  give  for  the  public  service.  A  most  inter- 
esting description  of  the  village  communities  in  the  Bombay 
Dekhan,  by  Col.  Sykes,  in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic 
Society  J  shows  how  the  Dravidian  and  Aryan  systems  worked 
side  by  side.  ^ 

The  leading  cultivators  in  these  villages  all  claimed  to 
be  Aryan  Marathas,  but  the  only  hereditary  offices  they 
held  were   those   of  patel^  or  headman,   and  kul-karni   or 

^  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society  ^  vol.  ii.  p.  208. 


120  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIDIES 

accountant.  Only  the  headman  held  land  in  virtue  of  his 
office,  and  he  had  also  the  right  of  giving  clearance-leases  of 
waste  land,  while  he  and  the  chief  tenants,  who  were  mem- 
bers of  the  village  corporation,  had  the  right  of  disposing  of 
abandoned  lands.  The  accountant,  who  was  generally  a 
Brahmin,  was  sometimes  paid  in  land,  but  more  often  in 
money  and  contributions  of  grain.  The  office  was  hereditary 
in  certain  families,  each  family  taking  it  in  turn  for  one  year, 
and  not  by  lot  or  election  as  among  the  Dravidians.  The 
land  was  divided  into  allotments  called  thaU  or  jathas^ 
each  being  assigned  to  a  separate  family,  and  called  by  its 
name.  This  name  remained  attached  to  the  land  though 
the  family  had  left  the  village,  and  the  land  had  passed  into 
other  hands. 

But  besides  these  Aryan  tenure-holders,  there  were  also  in 
each  Dekhan  village  families  of  aboriginal  descent  known  as 
Mahrs,  the  original  Mais  or  Mallis,  who  gave  the  country 
its  earliest  Aryan  name  of  M alla-rashtra,  the  kingdom  of  the 
Mais,  which  afterwards  became  Maratha.  They  held  lands 
on  tenures  precisely  similar  to  those  of  the  Ooraon  bhtm- 
hiars^  or  families  holding  village  offices.  Their  former  power 
had,  with  the  adoption  of  Aryan  rule,  passed  into  other 
hands,  but  they  still  held  their  hereditary  land  at  a  low 
quit-rent ;  but  in  addition  they  also  paid  for  it,  as  their 
fathers  had  done,  by  the  same  personal  services  to  the  com- 
munity, which  the  Aryans  thought  degrading,  but  which 
they  looked  on  as  honourable.  They  worked  gratuitously 
for  the  head  officer  of  the  district,  supplied  wood  for  fires, 
grass  for  horses,  and  baggage  animals  to  government  officers 
and  travellers  visiting  the  village,  acted  as  guides,  and  carried 
baggage  as  porters,  as  well  as  government  and  public  mes- 
sages. They  still  remained,  as  heretofore,  guardians  of  the 
village  boundaries,  and  referees  in  boundary  disputes,  and 
acted  as  assistants  to  the  headman,  bringing  the  villagers 
together  to  pay  their  revenue,  and  carrying  it  when  paid  to 
the  collector  of  the  district 


ESSAY  II  121 

We  also  find  in  the  Central  Provinces  a  transition  stage 
in  the  village  community  between  that  described  in  Chota 
Nagpore  and  the  mixed  Aryan  and  Dravidiaii  village  in 
Bombay.  There,  as  elsewhere,  the  parha  or  tribal  territory, 
known  locally  as  the  taluka  (a  name  used  also  in  the  North- 
west Provinces),  is  the  unit  of  territorial  division.  In  the 
wilder  and  more  remote  parts  the  village  organisation  is 
very  weak,  but  in  such  districts  as  those  in  the  Nerbudda 
valley,  where  the  divisions  into  townships  has  existed  from 
time  immemorial,  the  villages  show  their  antiquity  and 
permanence  by  the  comparative  completeness  of  their 
system  of  government.  In  Hoshangabad^  the  greater 
number  of  the  headmen  are  Brahmins  or  Rajputs,  and  the 
accountant  {patwari)  is  generally  a  Brahmin,  but  the  older 
races  are  not  so  universally  dominated  by  the  Aryans  as  in 
tlie  Bombay  Dekhan.  There  is  a  general  feeling  that 
Hinduism  under  Brahmin  supremacy  is  a  mark  of  respec- 
tability, but  the  family  is  not  so  prominent  as  in  the 
villages  where  the  Aryans  are  absolute  masters;  and  the 
village  priest,  who  takes  the  lead  in  the  ceremonies  of  the 
public  worship  of  Mu-Chundri,  the  mother-moon,  and  of 
Deo-than,  the  village  earth-god,  is  so  important  an  officer, 
that  the  accountant,  when  he  was  not  a  Brahmin,  some- 
times consented  to  combine  the  two  offices  in  his  own 
person.  In  that  case  the  priest  became,  like  the  Ooraon 
pahan^  one  of  the  chief  powers  in  the  village. 

In  Hoshangabad,  the  Kurkoos,  a  Kolarian  tribe  included 
in  the  Song  of  Lingal  among  the  four  tribes  representing 
the  predecessors  of  the  sons  of  Magha,  the  alligator  and  the 
tortoise,  are  usually  the  village  watchman  and  assistants  to 
tlie  headman ;  and  it  may  be  said  that  generally  throughout 
India  the  village  watchmen  belong  always  to  one  of  the 

1  Elliot's  Settlement  Report,  pp.  64  and  127-134.  This  is  the  best  and 
most  instructive  Settlement  Report  I  have  ever  read,  and  I  have  read  a  great 
many.  I  would  advise  all  students  of  the  Indian  village  system  to  examine  it 
thoroughly.     The  writer  is  now  Sir  C.  Elliot,  Lieut. -Governor  of  Bengal. 


/ 


122  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tribes  who  call  themselves  aboriginal,  or  to  one  of  the  low- 
castes  calling  themselves  Hindus,  but  following  the  customs 
of  their  aboriginal  forefathers. 

In  the  North-west  Provinces,  where  Aryan  influence  has 
long  been  more  powerful  than  elsewhere,  the  special  rights 
and  privileges  once  enjoyed  by  Dravidian  cultivators  seem 
to  a  great  extent  to  have  disappeared.  But  the  Dravidian 
organisation  still  survives  in  the  Talukdari  estates,  which 
represent  the  ancient  provinces,  and  in  the  villages  in  which 
the  cultivators  are  governed  by  single  proprietors,  who 
represent  the  munduy  changed  into  the  Kushite- Aryan 
patel^  or  by  joint-proprietors,  who  take  the  place  of  the 
ruling  Aryans  in  the  Dekhan  village.  But  everywhere 
throughout  India  we  find  that  the  village  organisation  can 
be  traced  back  to  those  founded  by  the  matriarchal  tribes, 
who  formed  the  oldest  class  of  ancestral  fathers — the  fathers 
who  eat  rice — and  I  have  shown  how  this  original  village 
system  passed  from  India  to  Europe,  how  it  was  altered  by 
the  yellow  race,  the  Pitaro  Barsihadah,  or  the  founders  of  the 
Kushite  State,  who  were  the  growers  of  barley,  and  how 
further  changes  were  made  by  the  later  Aryan  invaders — 
the  fathers  who  burned  their  dead.  It  was  thev  who  headed 
the  national  revolt  against  the  abstract  beliefs  of  the 
Semitic  traders,  who,  as  sons  of  the  moon,  had  succeeded 
to  the  Kushite  empire  ;  who  adapted  the  Sanskrit  language 
to  the  use  of  Dravidian  races,  and  founded  the  great 
Sanskrit  literature  and  the  schools  of  religion  and  philosophy, 
represented  by  the  Bhagavat  Gita,  or  the  Divine  Lay  of 
Krishna,  and  the  systems  of  the  metaphysical  inquirers. 
It  was  the  contradictions  and  inextricable  entanglement  of 
the  conclusions  of  these  opposing  philosophies  which  made 
Sidharta  Gautama,  the  Buddha,  discard  their  teaching  as 
useless,  and  substitute  for  the  Brahminical  sacrifices  and 
metaphysical  Will-of-the- Wisps  the  doctrine  of  self-culture 
by  the  eightfold  noble  path,  which  ended  not,  like  Semitic 
Jainism,   merely   in    the   killing   of    evil   habits   and   evil 


ESSAY  II  123 

thoughts,  but  in  the  growth  from  a  nature  prone  to  sin  to 

one  of  sinless  purity. 

But  before  closing  this  Essay,  I  must  describe  the  method 
of  reckoning  time  and  fixing  the  dat^s  of  the  national 
festivals  used  by  the  earliest  matriarchal  races,  wliich  is 
much  older  than  that  which  appears  in  the  story  of  Nala 
and  Damayanti,  and  in  the  year  of  five  seasons  on  which  the 
plot  of  the  Mahabharata  is  founded.  This  method,  which 
uses  the  Pleiades  as  measurers  of  time  and  the  customs  born 
from  it,  indubitably  proves  that  the  people  who  brought  to 
Europe  the  Indian  system  of  village  communities,  originally 
came  eitlier  from  the  southern  hemisphere  or  from  countries 
near  the  Equator.  The  constellation  has  always  been  asso- 
ciated with  agriculture,  and  Hesiod  tells  us  that  corn  is  to 
be  cut  in  May,  when  the  Pleiades  rise  after  disappearing  for 
forty  days,^  and  that  land  is  to  be  ploughed  in  November, 
the  Southern  spring  month.  The  Dyaks  of  Borneo  regulate 
their  agriculture  by  the  movements  of  the  Pleiades,  cutting 
the  jungle  when  they  are  low  in  the  east  before  sunrise, 
burning  what  they  have  cut  when  the  constellation  ap- 
proaches the  zenith,  planting  when  it  sinks  towards  tlie 
west,  and  reaping  their  crops  when  it  sets  in  the  early  even- 
ing.2  Over  the  whole  southern  hemisphere  time  has  appar- 
ently for  countless  ages  been  measured  by  a  year  of  two 
seasons,  in  which  the  beginning  and  end  of  each  season  is 
indicated  by  the  presence  or  absence  of  the  Pleiades  above 
the  horizon  at  sunset.  AVhen  the  sun  is  west  of  the  Pleiades 
during  the  Southern  spring  and  sunmier,  from  November  till 
April,  the  constellation  is  at  sunset  above  the  horizon,  and 
when  it  is  east  of  tlie  Pleiades  during  the  Southern  autumn 
and  winter,  from  April  to  November,  tlie  Pleiades  set  before 
the  sun,  and  are  therefore  invisible  at  sunset.     Ellis,  in  his 

*  Hesiod,  Works  and  Days,  v.  385. 

'  Blake,  Astroftomical  Myths ,  Macmillan,  4to,  1887.  Chap.  v.  *The 
Pleiades,'  p.  126.  This  chapter  is  said  by  the  author  to  be  based  on  a  very 
scarce  pamphlet,  called  Neiu  Materials  for  the  History  of  Man ^  by  K.  G. 
Haliburton,  F.S.A.,  which  can  be  seen  at  the  British  Museum. 


124  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Polynesian  Researches^  tells  us  that  the  Society  and  Tonga 
islanders  call  the  spring  and  summer  season,  beginning  the 
year  in  November,  Matarii  i  nia^  meaning  the  time  when  the 
Pleiades,  called  the  mother  stars  {mata\  are  seen  at  sunset, 
and  the  autumn  and  winter,  from  April  to  November,  when 
they  are  not  seen,  Matarii  i  raro.  All  nations  in  Polynesia 
begin  their  year  in  November  with  a  festival  to  the  dead, 
and  at  this  season  the  Tonga  islanders,  Ceylonese,  and 
Dyaks  of  Borneo,^  hold  their  feast  of  first-fruits,  called 
Inachi  in  Fiji,  and  Nycapian  in  Borneo,  and  this  festival 
corresponds  with  that  of  the  first-fruits  of  winter  rice,  called 
Janthar-puja,  kept  in  November  by  the  Bengal  Santals, 
who  call  one  of  their  septs  by  the  name  of  the  Pleiades, 
Saren.*  The  Western  Hindus,  who  trace  their  descent  from 
the  mother  Amba,  the  chief  star  of  the  Pleiades,  begin  their 
year  with  the  month  Khartik,  sacred  to  the  Pleiades,  in 
October-November,  and  hold  their  great  star  festival,  called 
Dibali  or  DipavalT,  the  feast  of  lamps  {dipa\  meaning  that 
of  the  bright  fire-gods  {vaU\  in  the  same  month,  by  illumin- 
ating the  streets  and  houses,  and  this  is  reproduced  in  the 
feast  of  lanthorns  in  Japan.^  The  fire-worshipping  Sogh- 
dians  and  Chorasmians  of  Central  Asia  began  their  list  of 
twenty-eight  lunar  stations,  indicating  the  position  of  the 
moon  during  each  day  of  the  lunar  month,  with  the  Pleiades, 
called  by  them  Par  we,  or  the  begetters  (peru)^  and  thus 
showed  that  the  beginning  of  their  year,  regulated  by  these 
months,  must  once  have  been  reckoned  from  the  position  of 
the  Pleiades.*  In  America  the  Mexicans,  who,  as  I  have 
shown  in  Essay  i.,  were  led  to  the  new  continents  by  the 

^  Blake,  Astronotnical  Myths ^  pp.  1 1 5,  1 19,  12 1,  126. 

-  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  ii.  'Santals,'  p.  233;  Appendix 
i.  p.  126. 

^  Sachau*s  Alberunl's  Ifidta^  vol.  ii.  chap.  Ixxvi.  p.  182  ;  Blake's  Astro- 
nomical Myths,  chap.  V.  *The  Pleiades,'  p.  126  ;  Monier-Williams,  Religious 
Thought  and  Life  in  India,  chap.  xvi.  *  Hindu  Fasts,  Festivals,  and  Holy 
Days,' pp.  432,  433. 

*  Sachau's  Alberuni's  Chronology  of  Ancient  Nations,  chap.  xL  p.  227. 


ESSAY  II  125 

Indian  Hsh-god,  and  who  brought  with  them  to  their  new 
home  the  Indian  and  Kushite  sacred  symbol  of  the  rain- 
cross,  began  their  cycle  of  fifty- two  years  with  the  culmina* 
tion  of  the  Pleiades  at  midnight  in  November.  Then  the 
new  sacred  fire,  lit  to  replace  that  put  out  in  all  houses  and 
temples,  was  kindled  with  the  fire-sticks  laid  on  the  breast 
of  the  human  victim,  the  most  noble  of  their  captives,  who 
was  sacrificed  to  vitalise  with  his  blood  the  earth  whence 
the  sons  of  the  new  era  were  to  be  born.^ 

Some  of  the  most  significant  of  the  rites  marking  the 
beginning  of  the  year  of  the  Pleiades  in  November  arc  fur- 
nished by  the  festivals  of  that  month  in  the  Egyptian 
ritual.  The  Egyptians  worshipped  the  Pleiades  under  the 
name  of  Athur-ai,  the  stars  of  the  goddess  Athyr,  which 
was  one  of  the  names  of  the  mother-goddess  Hat-hor,  and 
also  that  of  the  third  month  of  their  vear.  Hat-hor  means 
the  house  or  mother  (hat)  of  tlie  supreme  god  (hor)  Horus, 
who  was  the  meridian  pole  of  Egyptian  cosmogony,  also 
called  Amon-ra,  and  her  name  thus  shows  that  she  was  from 
the  first  a  time  goddess.  That  she  was  originally  a  goddess 
of  the  South  is  shown  by  her  being  the  mother-goddess  of  the 
sacred  tree  of  the  South,  the  sycamore  or  fig-mulberry,  called 
Neha;  and  this  tree  was  the  Egyptian  counterpart  of  the 
Hindu  fig-tree,  the  mother-tree  of  the  Kushite  race.  Her 
Hindu  origin  is  also  shown  first  by  her  festival  of  the  5th 
Pharmuthi,  aXrout  the  19th  February,  a  date  wliich  nearly 
corresponds  with  the  great  Magh  festival  of  the  Santals, 
Ooraons,  and  Mundas,  to  the  fire  and  witch  mother-goddess 
Magha,  when  the  Santal  year  ends.  She  was  then  wor- 
shipped in  Egypt  as  the  goddess  Bast,  distinguished  by 
bearing  on  her  head  a  lunar  crescent,  with  the  snake  creep- 
ing under  it.^  And  a  second  proof  of  her  Hindu  origin  is 
given  by  her  being  the  fish-goddess,  to  whom  the  Aten,  or 

^  Prescott,  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico^  Sixth  Edition,  vol.  i. 
chap.  iv.  p.  io6. 

2  H.  Bnigsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alten  yEgypter,  pp.  304,  331. 


126  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

carp,  allied  to  the  Hindu  Rohu  of  the  same  genus,  is  sacred, 
and  also  by  Ijer  being  in  one  of  her  forms  Hat-mehit,  tlie 
wife  of  Osiris,  the  goat-god  of  Mendes,  who  bore  the  fish- 
sign  on  her  head.^  The  Santal  name  for  the  Pleiades,  Sar-en, 
is  also  connected  with  the  fish-goddess,  for  the  mother-god- 
dess of  the  Savars,  the  Sus,  the  Su-varna  or  trading  races  of 
the  West,  is,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  in.,  a  fish-goddess, 
called  Sal-rishi,  a  name  which  I  have  traced  to  the  mother 
cloud-goddess  Sar,  and  the  father  antelope  (rishya).  The 
cloud-goddess  Sar  was,  as  I  have  shown,  the  Vedic  Saranyu, 
the  mother  of  the  twins,  day  and  night,  who  still  retains 
her  place  in  Indian  mythology  as  the  god  Hari,  whose  first 
avatar  was  a  fish.  She  was  the  fish-mother,  also  called 
Amba,  the  mother,  the  first  star  in  the  Pleiades,  who  led 
her  sons,  the  farmers  and  mariners  of  Southern  India,  to 
Persia,  Egypt,  Syria,  Asia  Minor,  and  Greece,  in  all  of 
which  countries  she  was  worshipped  as  the  fish-mother. 

'  A  four  days'*  festival  was  held  in  Egypt  on  the  17th 
Athyr  (September- October),  the  month  sacred  to  the 
Pleiades,  about  the  4th  of  October,  to  celebrate  the  mourn- 
ing of  Isis,  the  name  given  to  Hat-hor,  as  the  cow  and 
mountain- mother  (w),  for  the  death  of  Osiris,  but  that  the 
mourning  was  prospective,  and  indicated  grief  for  the  closing 
year,  which  is  to  be  replaced  by  its  successor,  the  new  year, 
is  shown  by  the  date  of  the  festival  of  the  death  of  Osiris. 
This  took  place  on  the  26th  Choiak,  about  the  12th 
November,  four  days  after  the  hoeing  festival,  held  on  the 
22d  Choiak,  and  four  days  before  that  of  Nahib-ka,  the 
primaeval  snake-god  of  the  tree-worshippers,  which  was  kept 
on  the  1st  Tybi.2  The  festival  of  the  26th  Choiak  wa*,  like 
the  Hindu  Dibali,  at  the  same  season,  the  occasion  of  a 
general  illumination,^  and  then  Osiris  was  placed  in  a  ship, 

1  Encyclopedia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  *Athor,'  vol.  ii.  pp.  13,  14. 
H.  Bnigsch,  Religion  mid  Mythologie  der  Alien  yEgypter,  p.  310. 

2  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^gypter^  pp.  303,  346. 
'  Ibid.  p.  617. 


ESSAY  II  127 

and  launched  out  to  sea.  Hence  tiie  story  tells  us  that 
Osiris,  the  strong  (osr)  sun-god,  the  Assyrian  Asar,  wor- 
shipped both  in  the  Euphratean  Delta  and  Egypt  as  the  god 
symbolised  by  the  eye,  showing  him  to  be  the  all-seeing  eye 
of  heaven,  was  another  form  of  the  Akkadian  Dumu-zi,  the 
son  (dumu)  of  life  (zi),  the  young  sun-god,  who,  in  the 
original  Deluge  story,  set  forth  in  his  bark  at  the  summer 
solstice,  when  the  Indian  rains  and  the  later  Egyptian  year 
began,  to  pursue  his  course  through  the  seas  of  time,  till  the 
close  of  his  yearly  journey.  In  the  26th  Choiak,  the  day  of 
the  month  chosen  for  the  festival  of  Osiris,  said  by  Egyp- 
tian mythologists  to  represent  '  water,**^  we  see  proof  that 
the  choice  of  the  day  was  influenced  by  the  science  of 
sacred  numbers,  which,  as  I  have  shown  above  in  speak- 
ing of  the  story  of  Nala  and  DamayantT,  plays  such  an 
important  part  in  ancient  mythology.  For  the  number 
twenty-six  is  sacred  to  a  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months, 
measured  by  twenty-six  lunar  phases ;  and  this  proves  that 
Osiris  was  a  sun-god,  ruling  the  lunar  year,  his  ship  being 
the  crescent  moon,  and  he  himself  being,  like  Dumu-zi,  the 
star  Orion,  the  Akkadian  Uru-anna,  meaning  the  foundation 
(uru)  of  heaven,  the  hunter  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iv., 
drove  before  him  through  its  yearly  course  the  crescent 
moon,  the  Indian  fox,  the  chariot  horse  of  India,  who  after- 
wards became  the  lunar  hare,  and  which  was  symbolised  in 
the  constellation  Lepus.  This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by 
a  hymn  supposed  to  be  addressed  by  Isis  to  Osiris,  in  which 
she  says  to  him — 

'  Place  thy  soul  in  the  bark  Ma-at ' 

(the  kosmic  law  of  unchanging  order), 
'  In  that  name  which  is  thine,  O  moon-god, 
Thou  who  comest  to 'us  as  a  child  each  month/  ^ 

It  is  in  the  myth  telling  of  the  death  and  burial  of  Osiris 
that  we  can  trace  exactly  how  the  life-giving  sap,  which 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mytkologie  der  Alten  ^gypter^  p.  293. 
-  Records  of  the  Past^  i.  p.  121  ff. 


128  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

made  all  plants,  and  the  animals  who  fed  on  them,  to  grow, 
became  the  parent  god,  the  eye  of  all  living  things,  the  god 
Piru,  or  parent  god,  who,  in  the  Finnish  theology,  gave  eyes 
to  the  snake.     He,  the  god   of  the   discerning   eye,  who 
traversed  the  world  with  the  ever-recurring  phases  of  the 
moon,  and  thus  made  grain,  fruits,  and  flowers  to  spring  up 
under  his  footsteps  in  the  lands  suited  to  their  growth.     In 
this  story  Osiris  is  the  gcid  of  the  corn-growing  races,  who, 
after  having  diffused  through  the  world  plenteous  crops  of 
wheat  and  barley,  grown  on  fertile  arable  land,  returns  at  the 
end  of  his  year'*s  course  as  the  sun,  who  has  done  his  journey. 
When  he  returned  to  die  as  the  sun  of  the  old  year  he  was 
slain  by  Set,  his  brother,  whose   name  means,  as  I  have 
shown,  *  the  vanquished  "*  god,  and  who  was  really  the  black 
water-snake  Ap-ap-i,  and  seventy-two  ^  others,  representing 
the  form  of  theology  in  which  the  triad  of  three  seasons 
ruled  by  the  black  water-snake,  the  constellation  Hydra, 
which  I  have  described  in  Essay  iv.,  the  seven  days  of  the 
week,  and  the  ten  lunar  months  of  gestation,  were  the  ruling 
gods.     They  placed  his  body  in  a  coffin,  the  ship  which  had 
been  his  cradle  as  the  infant  year,  and  threw  it  into  the  Nile. 
Isis  searched  all  over  the  world  for  her  lost  lord,  and  found 
his  body  on  the  Syrian  coast  at  Byblus,  and  on  looking  for 
the  coffin,  found  it  enclosed  in  a  pillar  formed  from  an 
Erica-tree  which  had  grown  round  it,  been  cut  down  and 
used  for  one  of  the  pillars  of  the  palace  of  the  king  of 
Byblus.     This  was  the  house-pillar,  the  father  pole  of  the 
Northern  races,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay  m.,  and  it  is 
this   Erica- tree  which  was  the  parent  tree  of  the  Syrian 
races,  the  original  barley-growers.     She  took  the  body  and 
the  coffin,  the  cradle  of  the  new  god  of  the  North,  who  was 
to  supersede  the  god  of  the  South,  when  time-measurements 
were  based  on  the  movements  of  the  Pleiades  and  Orion,  back 

*  The  seventy-two  assistants  of  Set  refer,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iv.,  to  the 
Babylonian  heavenly  circle  of  360  degrees,  and  to  the  year  of  five  seasons ; 
for  72  is  the  fifth  part  of  360. 


ESSAY  II  129 

to  Egypt.  On  her  arrival  she  left  the  body  and  went  to  visit 
Hor-us,  the  new  god  of  the  Northern  house-pole,  whose  four 
sons  guarded  the  four  qifarters  of  the  heavens,  the  meridian 
pole  of  the  Kushite  race,  whose  revolutions  were  to  be  used 
as  measurements  of  time,  in  place  of  the  rising  and  setting 
of  the  stars.  The  year  thus  introduced  was  that  of  four  and 
five  seasons,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay  iv.  While 
Isis  was  with  Hor-us,  Set  found  the  body  of  Osiris,  and  cut 
it  up  into  fourteen  pieces,  scattering  them  abroad,^  and 
these  represent  the  fourteen  days  of  the  lunar  phases  by 
which  time  was  now  to  be  measured,  the  Hindu  constella- 
tion of  the  Shishu  mara,  meaning  the  Alligator,  the  fourteen 
stars  round  the  pole,  which  were  turned  by  tlie  twin  stars 
Gemini,  and  among  these  was  the  star  Marlchi,  the  fire- 
spark,  the  parent  star  of  the  Kushite  race.  These  deduc- 
tions, which  make  the  year  opened  by  the  Pleiades  the  first 
form  of  the  year  ruled  by  Osiris  as  Orion,  are  confirmed  by 
the  festival  held  in  the  month  Athyr,  sacred  to  them,  to 
celebrate  the  mourning  of  Isis,  and  in  the  day  chosen  for 
the  festival,  the  17th  of  the  month,  we  find  the  sacred 
numbers,  seven  and  ten,  representing  the  seven  days  of  the 
week  and  the  ten  months  of  gestation.  That  this  number 
was  deliberately  chosen,  is  proved  by  its  being  repeated  in 
the  Hebrew  story  of  the  Deluge.  In  this  Noah,  the  year- 
god,  the  son  of  the  fish-mother,  embarks  on  his  birth-voyage, 
or  period  of  conception,  on  the  17th  day  of  the  second 
month,  the  Hebrew  Marchesvan,  answering  about  to  the 
2d  of  November,  and  we  thus  see  that  his  voyage,  like  that 
of  Osiris,  began  in  the  same  month  which  begins  the  year 
of  the  Pleiades.  The  year-goddess,  who  was  bom  in  this 
voyage,  was  the  mother  mountain  Ida,  the  cow,  and  moun- 
tain-mother of  the  ploughing  race,  the  Hindu  and  Phry- 
gian counterpart  of  the  Egyptian  Isis,  who  emerged  from 
the  waters,  according  to  Genesis,  on  tlie  first  day  of  the 
tenth  month,  and,  according  to  the  Hindu  story  of  Manu,  at 

*  Frazer's  Goldat  Bought  vol.  i.  chap,  iii,  pp.  302,  303. 

9 


d 


180  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  end  of  the  birth-year.  It  is  she  who  survives  in  Bengal 
as  the  goddess  Durga,  the  mountain,  under  the  name  of 
Kali,  meaning  the  time-goddess,  and  her  connection  with 
the  Pleiades  year  is  shown  by  the  celebration  of  her  festival, 
the  Kali-Puja,  on  the  darkest  night  of  the  dark  half  of 
Khartik,  the  Pleiades  month.  Her  altars  are  then  drenched 
with  the  blood  of  goats,  sheep,  and  buffaloes,  the  last  being 
the  plough  animals  of  the  Southern  races,  and  their  sacrifices 
show  that  her  worship  dates  from  the  age  of  totemistic 
feasts.^ 

But  we  have  now  to  turn  to  another  aspect  of  the  Pleiades 
ritual,  shown  by  the  festival  to  the  dead,  celebrated,  when 
the  year  began,  in  November.  This  festival  to  the  dead  year, 
and  to  the  dead  who  died  in  past  years,  is  celebrated  in  the 
Society  and  Tonga  Islands  by  prayers  offered  at  the  November 
New  Year^'s  Festival,  for  the  souls  of  departed  relatives,  and 
its  most  ancient  form  appears  in  the  corroboree  dances  of  the 
Australian  savages.  At  tlie  November  midnigiit  culmina- 
tion of  the  Pleiades,  called  by  them  Mormodellic,  when,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  Mexican  cycle  began,  they  worship  the  dead 
for  three  days.  The  Peruvians  also  began  their  year  in 
November,  and  called  thfe  New  Year's  feast  Ayu-Marca, 
meaning  the  carrying  (marca)  of  the  corpses  {ayu\  and 
they  then  visited  the  tombs  of  their  ancestors.  The  Sabaean 
fire-worshippers  of  South-western  Asia  held  the  festival, 
called  by  Albiruni  the  Great  Bakht,  or  day  of  fate,  or  the 
first  day  of  the  month,  called  Murdadh  by  the  Persians 
(October-November),  answering  to  the  Hindu  Khartik  the 
Pleiades  month,  and  worship  Venus,  called  Tar-sa,  as  the  fish- 
mother,  on  the  17th  of  the  month,  thus  reproducing  again  in 
this  series  the  number  seventeen.  It  is  sacred  to  the  Angel 
of  Death,  and  on  it  the  Festival  of  the  Dead  was  celebrated.^ 

^  Monier- Williams,   Religious  Life    and    Thought  in  Indian  chap.   xvi. 

*  Hindu  Fasts,  Festivals,  and  Holy  Days,*  p.  431. 

^  Sachau's  Alberuni's  Chronology  of  Ancient  Nations^  chap,  xviii.,  'Festivals 
of  the  Ancient  Magians,'  pp.  315-316  ;  '^\2k^%  Astronomical  Myths^  chap.  v. 

*  The  Pleiades,*  p.  121. 


ESSAY  II  131 

But  it  is  in  the  ritual  of  the  Druids  that  we  find  the  most 
certain  evidence  of  the  advent  to  Europe  of  the  Southei*n 
races,  who  measured  time  by  the  Pleiades.  The  Druids,  or 
priests  of  the  tree  (drw),  were  the  religious  teachers  of  the 
Cymric  Celts,  who,  according  to  their  traditions,  were  led  to 
Western  Europe  by  the  god  Hu.  His  name,  as  I  shall  show  in 
Essay  in.,  is  the  Northern  form  of  the  root  sny  to  beget,  or 
conceive,  which,  again,  is  a  Southern  form  of  the  Akkadian 
Jehu,  the  bird,  the  mother-bird,  whose  history  I  give  in  Essay 
HL,  and  who  laid  the  world'*s  egg,  which  also  appeared  in  their 
theology.  It  was  from  this  root  su  that  the  Indian  Soma 
was  formed,  and  it  was  in  the  Soma  festival  that  the  sacred 
sap  was  worshipped  as  the  water  of  life,  which,  when  sent 
from  heaven  as  seasonable  rain,  became  the  essence  of  all 
plant-life.  It  was  thus  the  generator  and  sustainer  of  all 
material  existence  depending  on  growth  and  increase.  This 
was  the  god  Hu  who  led  tiiem  from  India,  and  it  was  thence 
that,  together  with  his  worship,  they  brought  the  belief  in 
matriarchal  government,  shown  in  the  equality  of  the  Druid 
nuns  with  the  male  priests,  and  the  birth-legend  of  the 
worWs  egg  laid  by  the  mother-bird,  formed  of  snakes,  from 
which  the  hundred  Nagas,  or  rain-snakes,  the  Kauravya,  or 
tortoise,  sops  of  the  goddess-mother  Gan-dhari,  were  born.^ 
It  was  also  from  India  tliat  they  brought  their  reverence 
for  groves  and  trees  and  the  human  sacrifices  introduced  by 
the  fire-worshippers.  They  celebrated  the  reconstruction 
of  the  world  on  the  1st  November.  As  a  symbol  of  its 
death  and  resurrection,  the  Druidess  nuns,  the  priestesses  of 
the  mother-earth  goddess,  were  then  obliged  to  pull  down 
and  rebuild  the  roof  of  their  temple,  and  if  any  one  of  them, 
when  bringing  materials  for  the  new  roof,  let  her  sacred 
burden  fall,  she  was  set  upon  and  toni  in  pieces  by  her  com- 
panions. All  fires,  as  in  Mexico,  were  then  extinguished, 
and  had  to  be  relighted  by  the  sacred  fire  kindled  by  the 
Druid  priests.     During  the  darkness  of  the  nights  after  the 

^  Encyclopadia  Britannica,  9th  Edition,  vol.  vii.,  *  Druidism,'  pp.  477-479. 


132  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

fires  had  been  put  out,  tlie  dead  of  the  past  year  were,  as 
among  the  Egyptians,  thought  to  pass  to  the  west,  whence 
they  were  carried  in  boats  to  the  judgment-seat  of  the  god 
of  the  dead,  before  they  passed  to  the  Elysian  fields,  the 
gardens  called  by  the  Greeks  the  Hesperides,  the  home  of 
the  maidens  who  guarded  the  three  golden  apples — the  three 
seasons  of  the  year.  These  were  brought  each  year  to  earth 
by  the  sun  of  the  West  and  South,  Hesperus,  the  god  of 
the  winter  season,  in  which  the  young  sun -god  of  the  coming 
year  is  bom. 

It  is  this  Druid  festival  and  the  three  days'*  corroboree  of  the 
Australian  savages  which  still  survive  throughout  Europe 
in  the  three  sacred  days  of  the  31st  of  October  and  the 
1st  and  2nd  of  November,  called  All  Hallow  Eve,  All 
Saints'"  Day,  and  All  Souls'*  day.  It  is  on  All  Hallow  Eve 
that  in  Scotland,  Ireland,  Wales,  and  Cornwall  torches  and 
bonfires  are  still  lighted  and  games  played,  and  the  Guy 
Fawks  bonfires  of  England  are  only  transfers  of  these  New 
Year'*s  fires  to  the  5th  of  the  month.  It  is  on  All  Souls' 
Day  that  the  people  of  France,  Belgium,  South  Germany, 
and  Russia  visit  the  tombs  of  their  ancestors,  hang  wreaths 
and  light  candles  over  their  graves.^ 

But  the  November  festivals  of  the  Pleiades  were  not  the 
only  important  feasts  of  this  early  cult,  for  we  find  that 
those  connected  with  the  southern,  western,  and  northern 
spring  in  April  and  May,  assumed,  when  the  village  com- 
munities had  finally  settled  in  the  northern  hemisphere, 
even  more  importance  than  the  November  feasts  of  the 
South.  It  was  then  that  the  Gonds  of  Central  India  founded 
the  Northern  spring  festival  of  the  Nagar,  or  plough-god, 
answering  to  the  hoeing  festival,  the  spring  feast  of  the 
South,  celebrated  in  the  Egyptian  Choiak  (November).  The 
name  of  the  plough -god  has  been  translated  by  the  Greeks 
into  Ge-ourgos,  the  worker  of  the  earth,  and  the  history  of 
his  worship  is  fully  given  in  Essays  i.  and  iii.     It  was  also  in 

*  Blake,  Astronomical  Myths ^  chap.  v.  *  The  Pleiades,'  pp.  124-125. 


ESSAY  II  133 

April  that  the  apparently  eariier  festival  of  the  Palilia,  out 
of  which  that  of  the  plough-god  grew,  was  celebrated.  These, 
and  the  annual  dances  round  the  Maypole,  are  relics  of  the 
ancient  festivals  which  celebrated  the  coming  of  spring  at  the 
disappearance  of  the  Pleiades  in  April,  and  their  rising  again 
in  May ;  and  the  Queen  of  the  May  is  the  ancient  mother 
Amba,  the  chief  star  of  the  Pleiades,  who  was,  according  to 
Indian  tradition,  the  promised  bride  of  the  King  of  Saubha, 
the  city  of  the  magicians,  and,  therefore,  the  wonder-working 
mother  Maga,  who,  from  the  apparently  lifeless  egg  of 
the  clouds  and  revolving  moon,  which  bring  the  April 
showers,  has  created  the  living  life  of  summer,  and  who  has 
given  her  name  to  the  month  of  May.  Also,  the  Maypole 
is  the  Tur,  the  sacred  house  and  meridian  pole,  the  god  of 
the  Tur-vasu,  whose  god,  the  Tur,  was  the  heavenly  fire-drill, 
which  carried  the  stars  round  with  him  in  his  revolutions. 
These  people  began  their  year  in  April  with  the  disappear- 
ance of  the  Pleiades  below  the  horizon  at  sunset,  the  time 
when  the  worWs  egg,  the  Easter  eggs,  were  laid,  and  when  the 
Northern  moon-hare,  the  Easter-hare  of  Southern  Europe, 
started  on  her  annual  series  of  monthly  races  as  the  crescent- 
moon,  which,  after  becoming  full,  returns  again  to  its  original 
form ;  the  home  earth  to  which  the  Indian  fox,  who  was,  as  I 
have  shown  above,  the  original  moon- hare,  always  comes 
back  when  hunted. 


ESSAY    III 

TIIK  KAttliY  HISTORY  OF  INDIA,  SOUTH-WESTERN  ASIA,  EGYPT, 
AND  MOirrHKRN  EUROPE,  AS  TAUGHT  BY  THAT  OF  THE 
WOnHlin*  OF  THE  HINDU  SOMA,  THE  ZEND  HAOMA,  THE 
AHHVIIIAN    I8TAR,  AND   THE    EGYPTIAN    ISIS 

No  i(t  iuioiit  of  the  history  of  religion  and  national  growth 
III  IiuliA  and  Iran  can  fail  to  notice  the  reverence  paid  to 
\\w  fiTinontiHl  juice  of  a  plant,  called  the  god  Soma  in  the 
Higvrdii,  and  Haoma  in  the  Zendavesta.  In  the  Rigveda, 
Siiiiui  Ih  the  father  and  begetter  of  the  gods  ;  ^  the  Lord  of 
Ihougltt  (manasa^-pati)^  and  of  speech  {vacas-pcUi)?  It  is 
to  Hoina  tliat  all  the  hymns  in  one  Mandala,  the  ninth  of  the 
tuii  M aijKJalas  of  the  Rigveda,  are  addressed,  and  out  of  the 
UWH  liyiiniH  in  these  ten  Mandalas,  681  are  hymns  to  the 
\\\f\H^  chief  gods  of  the  Soma  sctcrifice,  123  to  Soma  alone, 
HA4  to  Indra,  and  204  to  Agni  and  their  associate  gods,  while 
(ho  remainder  teem  with  allusions  to  and  praises  of  Soma. 
Ill  tin*  great  Yasna,  or  annual  sacrifice  to  the  gods  of  Time, 
ill  (ht»  Zendavesta,  the  last  libations  made  before  prayers 
HIH*  oHered  to  the  gods  are  those  to  Haoma,  and  in  the  final 

(irtiyt*n*  tliose  to  Haoma  follow  the  invocations  to  Ahura 
^HKda.  Haoma  is  the  last  of  the  victorious  demi-gods 
\vhiMe  deeds  are  celebrated  in  the  Hom  Yast,  and  he  is  the 
ItlHHit'  god  who  destroyed  the  usurper  Kereshani,  the  Krishanu 
\tf  \  hi*  Rigveda,  the  footless  archer  who  wished  to  keep  Soma 

*  Rigveda,  ix.  87,  2.  2  Ibid.  ix.  99,  6. 

'  Ibid,  ix.  26,  4 ;  loi,  6. 


■ 


ESSAY  III  136 

in  heaven,  and  who  said  :  *  No  priest  who  would  rob  every- 
thing of  progress  shall  walk  the  lands  for  me.**  ^ 

When  we  remember  that  the  Rigveda  and  Zendavesta  are 
not  the  religious  books  of  an  isolated  sect,  but  the  outcome 
of  the  religious  records  of  the  successive  races  who  ruled 
India  and  Iran  from  the  first  dawn  of  civilisation,  we  shall 
at  once  see  the  great  historical  value  of  the  history  of  the 
worship  of  their  great  god  Soma.  It  is  this  which  we  shall 
find  in  the  pictures  of  the  progress  of  religious  thought  given 
in  the  hymns  of  the  Rigveda,  and  the  ritual  and  Yasts  of 
the  Zendavesta.  These  begin  with  the  first  guesses  at  truth 
of  the  founders  of  national  life,  and  are  followed  up  by  the 
additions  by  the  various  races  who  succeeded  them  as  rulers 
of  the  land  and  fosterers  of  its  culture.  Though  the  Aryan 
speech  of  the  Vedic  and  Zend  writers  was  a  late  importation 
into  their  respective  countries,  yet  the  thoughts  they  re- 
corded in  it  were  moulded  in  ideas  bom  in  pre-Aryan  times, 
and  the  union  of  the  two  elements  is  shown  by  their  frequent 
use  of  words  spelt  with  the  cerebral  linguals,  ^,  rf,  th^  dh^ 
w,  which  are  not  found  in  any  of  the  European  Aryan  lan- 
guages, but  are  fundamental  letters  of  the  Tamil-Dravidian 
dialects  of  Southern  India  and  the  Afghan  Pushtu. - 

The  existence  of  these  letters  in  Sanskrit  proves  that  the 
native  language  of  Northern  India,  which  preceded  it,  must 
have  belonged  to  the  Dravidian  type.  But  the  interfusion 
of  these  alien  races  is  not  marked  only  in  the  Indian  San- 
skrit, but  also  by  the  evolution  of  religious  ritual  and 
thought ;  for  the  Aryans,  like  all  other  ancient  races,  based 
their  state  policy  on  the  belief  that  no  people  who  had  not 
the  gods  of  the  land  on  their  side,  could  maintain  a  stable 
government   in   any  country.     Therefore   every  conquering 

^  Mill,  Ydsrta,  ix.  2,  4;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  pp.  237,  238;  Rigveda,  iv. 
27,  8. 

•  Benfey,  Complete  Sanskrit  Grammar ^  p.  20,  thinks  it  certain  *  that  while 
the  mute  cerebrals  have  been  firmly  established  in  Sanskrit/  they  were  origin- 
ally introduced  from  the  phonetic  system  of  the  Indian  aborigines. 


136  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

race  adopted  the  ritual  of  their  predecessors  as  part  of 
their  inheritance,  and  with  it  they  took  over  the  popular 
history  of  national  and  religious  growth,  set  forth  in  the  his- 
torical mjrths  depicting  its  various  stages.  Thus  it  was  that 
the  supreme  gods  of  dead  beliefs  were  included  in  the  national 
Pantheon,  such  as  the  Azi  Dahaka  of  the  Zendavesta,  *  the 
fiendish  Druj  '  overthrown,  and  superseded  by  Thraetaona, 
and  the  first  two  sacred  fires  of  the  Yasnas,  called  Berezi 
Savangha  and  Vohu  Fryano.^  The  fire  of  Berezi  Savangha, 
or  of  the  Eastern  (savah)  Berezi  is  the  goddess  -  mother 
Magha,  of  the  race  of  Brisaya,  meaning  the  sorceress, 
who  are,  in  the  Rigveda,  conquered  by  Agni-Soma,  and  the 
river  Sarasvati,^  the  mother-river  of  the  Agni  worshippers. 
The  name  of  the  second  fire,  Vohu  Fryano,  proves  un- 
mistakably that  it  was  that  of  the  phallic  father-god  of 
the  tribe  Fryano,  the  intimate  allies  of  the  Mazdeans,  called 
in  the  Gathas  *  Turanians,  who  shall  further  on  the  settle- 
ments of  piety  with  zeal.**^  The  Turanians  do  not  use  aspir- 
ated cerebrals,  and, therefore,  the  name  Fryano  must  represent 
a  Turanian  word,  Viru-ano,  or  a  race  whose  god  is  the  Viru. 
These  must  be  the  Iranian  congeners  of  the  Hindu  Virata, 
who  rule  the  Mathura  country  on  the  Jumna  in  the  Maha- 
bharata.  These  are  the  same  people  as  the  Kurumbas,  a 
tribe  of  hunters  and  shepherds  widely  distributed  over 
Southern  India.  The  god  of  these  people  is,  as  we  learn 
from  the  Mackenzie  Manuscripts,  Virubhadra,  the  blessed 
Viru,  or  the  phallic  god,  and  the  tribe  generally  worship  the 
Sakti,  or  male  and  female  symbols  of  generation.  They 
call  themselves  Idaiya,  or  sons  of  IdfiC^  or  Eda,  the  sheep,  and 
include  a  part  of  the  great  cultivating  caste  of  the  Kurmis, 


^  Mill,  Vasna,  xvii.  ;  S.6.E.  vol.  xxxi.  p.  258. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  43, 4  ;  vi.  61,  3.  Grassmann,  Worterbuch  zum  Rigveda^  s.v. 
*  Brisaya.'  The  root  briy  from  which  Brisaya  comes,  means  *  to  bring  forth,' 
and  is  the  counterpart  of  the  root  mag^  *  to  make,  to  create,*  from  which 
Maga  is  derived. 

«  Mill,  Yasna  Gdtha  Ustavaiti  Yasna^  xlvi.  12  ;   S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  p.  141. 


ESSAY  III  137 

or  Kudumbis.^  They  are  the  Viru-paksha,  or  tribe  of  Vim- 
worshippers,  named  in  a  list  of  snake-worshipping  races  in 
the  ChuUa  vagga.2  And  they  are  the  people  who  are  de- 
stroyed by  Indra  in  the  Rig^'eda,  who  worship  the  Shisna- 
deva,  or  phallic  god.^ 

Thus  both  the  Kigveda  and  Zendavesta  taught  that  men 
reached  truth  through  error,  and  by  detecting  the  mistakes 
made  by  successive  inquirers  into  the  mysteries  of  creation  and 
reproduction,  and,  therefore,  in  trying  to  identify  the  slowly 
evolving  links  in  the  chain  of  reasoning  which  led  those,  who 
first  looked  for  the  origin  of  life  to  the  wonder-working 
mother  and  the  phallic  father,  to  adopt  the  fermented  sap 
of  a  plant  as  the  symbol  of  the  creating  spirit,  we  must 
begin  with  the  facts  set  forth  in  the  ritual  of  the  Soma  sacri- 
fice in  India  and  Persia  in  Vedic  times,  and  must  in  examin- 
ing these,  remember  that  the  ritual  is  formed  by  the  accre- 
tion of  successive  forms  showing  various  stages  of  growth. 
The  Soma  or  Haoma  there  worshipped  comes  from  a  moun- 
tain plant,  growing  both  in  Afghanistan,  where  it  was  found 
by  Dr.  Aitchison,  and  in  Karman  in  Persia,  where  it  was 
shown  by  the  Parsis  to  Mr.  A.  Houttum  Schindler.  They 
both  identified  it  as  a  Sarcostermna  asclepias^  and  named  it 
Periploca  aphylla}  The  juice  was  extracted  by  the  Zend 
Parsis  by  pounding  the  stalks  in  a  mortar,  and  both  by 
churning  in  a  mortar  {ulukhala)^  and  pressing  between 
pressing-stones   (adri,  grdvan)   by   the   Vedic    Soma   wor- 


^  Prof.  G.  Oppert  on  the  Original  Inhabitants  of  Bhdrata  Varsha, 
Part  II.  pp.  237.239. 

*  Rhys  Davids  and  01denberg*s  Vinaya  Texts,  *  ChuUa  vagga,'  v.  6  ; 
S.B.E.  vol.  XX.  p.  76. 

'  Rigveda,  vii.  21,  5  ;  x.  99,  3.     See  also  x.  27,  19. 

*  Eggeling,  ^at,  Brdh,^  Introduction  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  25. 

^  Rigveda,  1.  28,  3,  speaks  of  a  woman  making  Soma  in  a  mortar  {ulOk- 
hala)y  and  describes  how  the  pestle  is  used,  not  as  a  pounder,  but  as  a  churning 
staff,  tamed,  like  the  fire-drill,  with  '  rasmi '  or  reins,  that  is,  a  string  fixed 
to  the  cross-bar  at  the  top  of  the  churning  stick.  Ilillebrandt,  Vedische 
Mythologity  s.v.  'Ulukhala,'  pp.  158-160. 


138  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

shippers.^  The  juice  is  greenish-white,  and  becomes  in  a  few 
days  a  yellowish-brown,  sour  liquid,  like  the  Soma  which  the 
gods  took  from  the  Vritra,  or  snake-races  in  the  Brahmanas, 
which  they  could  not  drink  till  Vayu,  the  wind-god,  blew 
through  it.*  But  Soma  could  also  be  made  from  other 
plants,  for  the  Bombay  Brahmins  make  it  from  a  plant  grow- 
ing on  the  hills  near  Poona,  which  has  a  bitter  sap,  and 
which  they  showed  to  Dr.  Haug.  In  the  Satapatha  Brah- 
mana  other  alternative  plants  are  named* — (1)  The  red  and 
brown  flowering  Phalguna  and  the  Adara.  The  second  and 
third  of  these  I  cannot  identify,  but  the  first  is  probably  the 
wild  turmeric,  Curcuma  zedoaria^  called  in  Sanskrit  Shola^ 
Sholika^  or  VunariMa ;  it  l)ears  tufts  of  red  flowers,  which 
blossom  in  Phalguna  (April).  Turmeric  was,  as  I  shall 
show  in  the  sequel,  sacred  to  the  yellow  race  who  were  the 
first  founders  of  the  Soma  sacrifice.  (2)  The  Shyena  hrita,  or 
plant  brought  to  earth  from  heaven  with  the  Soma  by  the 
Shyena  bird.  This,  as  we  learn  from  the  Brahmanas,  was 
the  Palasha-tree  {Buteajrondosa)^  which  had  in  it  the  essence 
of  Brahma,  the  creating  god.*  This  is  the  tree  thought  by 
the  Ho  Kols  to  be  sacred  to  the  god  Desauli,  the  guardian 
of  the  village,  to  whom  they  offer  Palas  flowers  at  the  great 
national  Saturnalia  held  in  Magh  (Jan.-Feb.),  the  month 
sacred  to  the  witch-mother  Maga  ;^  and  the  Gonds  also,  as  I 
shall  show,  use  Palas  branches  to  support  the  sacrificial  hut 
built  by  every  cultivator  for  the  autumn  sacrifice  to  Mu- 
Chandri,  the  moon-goddess.  (3)  Besides  these,  Dub,  or 
Kusha  grass  {Poa  cyno»uroides\  the  sacred  grass  of  the 
Eushika  or  tortoise  race  may  be  used,  and  also  yellow 
Kusha  plants.  The  use  of  these  different  plants  as  the 
source  of  the   sacred  Soma,   prove  it   to   be   a   symbol   of 

^  Rigveda,  vii.   104,   17;    x.  36,4;    x.  100,8;    v.  31,  5.     llillebrandt's 
Vedische  Mythologie  die  Steinty  p.  1 52. 
'  Eggeling,  Sat,  Btdh.  iv.  i,  3,  4-10;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  265-267. 
3  Eggeling,  iv.  5,  10,  2-4;  S.B.E.  pp.  421,  422. 

*  Eggeling,  i.  7,  i,  i,  3,  3,  19;   S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  89,  90,  183,  184. 

*  Kisley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  p.  327. 


ESSAY  III  139 

the  life-germ  which  makes  plants  grow,  bud,  blossom,  fruit, 
and  reproduce  successors  by  seed,  and  that  it  is  through 
partaking  of  this  divine  essence  that  life  is  continued  to 
those  who  are  sanctified  by  incorporating  it  into  their 
frame. 

In  finding  out  the  chronological  order  of  the  various 
ideal  symbols  of  the  life-germ,  which  culminated  in  Soma 
worship,  I  will  first  examine  the  history  and  etymology  of 
the  name,  and  next  the  ritual  of  the  Soma  and  Haoma 
sacrifices,  making  use  in  the  inquiries  of  the  historical  myths 
and  tribal  customs  which  mark  the  various  stages  in  the 
evolution  of  Soma,  Haoma,  and  Istar  worship,  all  of  which 
we  shall  find  to  be  ultimately  identical. 

Soma  and  Haoma  are  different  forms  of  the  same  word, 
derived  from  a  root  meaning  to  beget,  which  is  su  in  Sanskrit, 
and  hu  in  Zend.  When  we  analyse  the  meanings  of  the 
word  Soma  and  its  history,  we  find  that  su  is  certainly  the 
older  of  these  two  forms.  Soma,  both  in  the  Brahmanas 
and  Rigveda,  means  the  moon  nearly  as  often  as  the  sap 
of  the  Soma  plant.  The  moon-god  when  wedded  to  the 
daughter  of  the  sun,  in  the  Rig\'eda,  is  called  Soma,  and  in 
the  hymn  telling  of  the  marriage.  Soma  is  said  to  stand  in 
heaven  as  the  central  point  of  the  Nakshatras,  or  circle  of 
stars,  used  by  Hindu  astronomers  to  calculate  the  period  of 
the  five  years'*  cycle  by  which  they  regulate  the  difference 
between  solar  and  lunar  time.^  In  other  hymns  Soma,  the 
moon,  is  said  to  clothe  himself  in  sunbeams  ^  and  to  be  the 
ruler  of  heaven,  to  whom  the  sun  and  stars  belong,*  and  to 
lead  the  way  up  the  steepest  paths  of  the  sky,*  while  the 
whole  of  the  111  hymns  in  the  ninth  Mandala  of  the 
Rigveda  to  Soma,  called  Pavaniana,  or  the  cleanser,  are, 
as  Hillebrandt  has  shown,  hymns  to  the  autunm  moon, 
reappearing  after  the  earth  has  been  cleansed  of  her  im- 
purities by   the   rains    of   the    rainy   season,   which,   when 

*  Rigveda,  x.  85,  1-2.  ^  Ibid.  ix.  86,  32. 

'  Ibid,  V.  29.  *  Ibid,  i.  91,  i. 


140  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

strained  through  the  heavenly  sieve  (pavitra),  make  it  pure 
for  the  coming  year.^  The  lunar  Rajputs  call  themselves 
Som-bunsi,  or  sons  of  their  parent  god  Soma,  the  moon,  and 
all  use  the  patronymic  Singh,  meaning  both  a  horn  and  a 
lion.  This  name  Singh,  meaning  the  horned-moon,  takes 
us  to  the  Vedic  name  for  river,  Sindhu,  the  moon-river,  a 
name  given  also  to  the  Indus.  This  name  Sindhu  appears 
also  in  Sindhava,  the  modem  Sindh,  the  name  of  the  country 
through  which  the  Indus  flows.  The  conquests  of  the  Som- 
bunsi  have  extended  this  local  name  to  the  whole  of  India, 
which  they  called  Sindhava,  the  moon-land,  or  the  land  of 
the  sons  of  the  moon.  This  name  Sindhu  becomes  in  Persian 
Hindu,  and  this  change  is  exactly  the  same  as  has  made  tlie 
root  su  into  the  Zend  hu.  Therefore  Su  or  Shu,  like  Sindhu, 
must  be  of  Southern  origin,  and  we  must  look  for  this 
among  the  people  who  called  the  moon  Sin.  These  were*  the 
Sumerians,  the  primitive  rulers  of  the  Euphratean  Delta, 
who  called  themselves  the  Gaurian  race,  a  name  reproduced 
in  India  by  the  Turanian  Gonds,  who  call  themselves  sons  of 
Gauri  (Bos  ffaurus),  the  wild  cow.  Tlie  earliest  capital  of 
these  people  knomi  to  us  is  the  town  now  called  Telloh, 
which  was  anciently  called  Lu-gash,  and  its  people,  as  we 
learn  from  an  Akkadian  vocabulary,  called  their  country 
Shu-gir,  or  the  land  of  the  Shus,  a  name  which  also  appears 
in  Gir-su,  an  alternative  name  of  their  capital  city.^  Tliis 
name  afterwards  l)ecAme  Shushan,  the  province  to  the  west 
of  the  Persian  Gulf,  where  the  people  worshipped  the  great 
god  Susi-nag,  the  god  of  Elam,  or  the  mountain  country 
of  the  Akkadians.^  And  it  is  these  Shus,  who  must  be  the 
trading  and  conquering  race  called  in  the  Mahabharata  and 
Rigveda  the  Shu-varna,  or  caste  of  the  Shus,  who  called  the 
country,  now  called  Sindh,  Sindhu-Suvarna,  and  made  Patala, 
the  modem  Hyderabad  and  capital  of  Sindh,  which  was  then 

1  Hillebrandt,  Vcdische  Mythologie,  pp.  385-388. 

-  F.  Ilommel,  Geshichte  Bahylonuns  und  Assy  Hens  ^  bk.  i.  p.  316, 

'  Maspero,  Egypt  aftd  Assyria,  chap,  xviii.  p.  316. 


ESSAY  III  141 

a  seaport,  their  capital  As  Piitala  is  now  one  hundred  and 
fifteen  miles  from  the  sea,^  the  days  when  it  stood  on  the 
seashore  must  l)e  many  thousand  years  ago,  for,  at  the  same 
rate  of  increase,  sixty-six  feet  yearly,  which  is  computed  to 
be  that  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  these  one  hundred  and 
fifteen  miles  must  have  taken  more  than  nine  thousand  years 
to  accumulate.'  It  was  these  Shus  who  called  the  country 
of  Guzerat  Saurashtra,  or  the  country  of  the  Saus,  and  they 
still  form  the  great  trading  race  of  India,  known  everywhere 
as  the  Saus  or  Sao-kars.  It  was  they  who  called  their  moon- 
god  Shin  or  Sin.  But  for  the  derivation  of  this  name  we 
must  look  to  that  of  Shumir,  the  name  by  which  the 
Assyrians  called  the  Euphratean  Delta  ruled  by  the  Shus, 
and  first  called  Shu-gir.  Shumir,  as  Lenormant  shows, 
through  its  Hebrew  form  Shinar,  must  have  originally  con- 
tained a  guttural  represented  by  the  ain  (y)  in  the  Hebrew 
spelling.  This  guttural  is  also  found  in  the  Arabic  form 
Sindjhar,  and  in  that  of  the  Singhara  mountains,  placed  by 
Ptolemy  as  stretching  from  the  Tigris  across  Western  Asia. 
The  original  name  must,  therefore,  according  to  Lenormant, 
have  been  Sin-gir  or  Shin-gir.^  This  name  is  also  connected 
with  the  ancestral  descent  of  these  people  from  the  wild 
cow  by  the  Hindu  patronymic  Singh,  the  horn,  and  Sin,  the 
moon,  must  also  be  the  homed  moon.  The  Akkadian  word 
for  horn,  *Ai,  has  also  a  form  shiff^*  and  means  sky,  and  to 
fill,  as  well  as  honi,  and  is,  therefore,  connected  with  the  root 
«aAr,  to  be  wet,  from  which  Lenormant  derives  Sin-gir,  mean- 
ing the  wetting  horn.  The  mother  city  of  this  wet  land 
of  the  Shus,  the  Euphratean  Delta,  was  Erech,  the  Akkadian 
Unuk,  and  this  name,  as  Dr.  Sayce  shows,  is  the  same  as  that 
of  Enoch,  the  son  of  Cain,  the  first  city  builder.^     Istar  was 

*  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  Indian  pp.  283-285. 

'  Sayce,  Hibberi  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  185.     The  actual  number 
of  years  given  by  calculation  is  9185. 
'  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic ^  pp.  395-402. 

*  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  No.  iiS. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbtrt  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  185;    Gen.  iv.  17. 


142  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  mother-goddess  of  this  city  and  supreme  goddess  of  the 
land,  both  under  Akkadian  and  Assyrian  rule,  and  her  names 
confirm  the  conclusion  that  the  country  was  called  the 
wet  land.  One  of  her  Akkadian  names  is  Shuk-us.  The 
ideogram  *^)  is  formed  of  two  elements.  The  first, 
>V,  when  standing  alone,  is  pronounced  sur  or  jsrwr,  and 
means  rain,  and  also  to  arise,  and  illumination ;  while  J  means 
king,  or  one,  so  that  the  name  Shuk-us  means  the  raining 
one.^  She  is  also  called  Tiskhu,  and  under  this  name  she  is 
the  star-god,  who  directs  the  archangels  (anuna-ge)  of  the 
earth,^  and  it  is  Anu,  the  god  of  heaven,  and  Tiskhu  who 
become  rulers  of  the  sky  when  the  moon  is  eclipsed  and 
made  to  wane  by  the  seven  wicked  spirits.'  The  ideogram 
for  Tiskhu  *-Vi§T*>  ®^  pronounced  shuk^  begins,  like 
Shuk-us,  with  the  sign  for  rain ;  while  ^,  pronounced 
ku^  means  power,  and  a  mountain  peak,^  so  that  the  name 
means  the  power  or  star-god,  whicli  brings  the  rain,  or  the 
raining  mountain.  To  establish  the  connection  between  the 
star-god  who  brings  the  rain,  and  Istar,  we  must  turn  to  the 
Egyptian  Isis,  whose  name,  like  that  of  Istar,  comes,  as  Pro- 
fessor Tiele  luis  shown,  from  tlie  Akkadian  root  w,  meaning 
a  mountain,  which  also  appears  in  tlie  Akkadian  is'iy  a  cow, 
and  this  is  one  of  the  fonns  assumed  in  Eg\^t  by  Isis,  a 
transformation  which  is  not  followed  by  her  Akkadian  pro- 
totype Istar.  But  both  are  star-goddesses.  Isis  b^ing  Isis 
Satit,  the  star  Sirius,  and  it  is  this  star  which  must  liave 
been  that  called  by  the  Akkadians  Tis-khu.  It  is  this  star 
which  brings  tlie  rain,  for  its  rising  at  the  summer  solstice 
ushers  in  the  rainy  secuson,  the  South-west  monsoon ;  and 
it  is  the  rising  of  this  star,  called  in  the  Zendavesta 
Tish-triya,  which  begins  the  Zend  as  well  as  the  Egj^tian 

^  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  loi  and  99,  427. 

-  Lenormant,  Ckaldaan  Magic^  p.  139, 

'  Ibid,  p.  206. 

■*  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  No.  100. 

«  Ibid,  No.  462. 


ESSAY  III  143 

year  with  the  time  of  the  rainy  season,  called  the  rains  of 
Tish-triya.^ 

In  tracing  the  origin  of  the  root  is,  we  must,  as  Akkadian 
is  an  Ural  Altaic  language,  look  to  other  cognate  Finnic 
dialects.  Is^  as  Castren  tells  us,  is  the  most  common  name 
for  god  in  all  these  languages.  It  appears  as  Esch  in 
Kamacintzi  Es  in  Yenissei-Ostiak,  meaning  heaven,  in  the 
Etruscan  Aisar,  and  the  CEsar  of  the  Edda,  both  meaning  the 
gods.  Tar  is  the  Akkadian  tar  young.  The  Finnic  tor,  the 
Etruscan  Etera^  and  the  Asiatic  Turkish  TurUj  all  mean 
^  child,""  and  it  is  the  feminine  suffix,  meaning  daughter,  used 
in  tlie  Finnic  poem  of  the  Kalcvala  to  show  that  the  deity 
named  is  a  goddess.  Thus  Etele-tar  means  the  daughter  of 
the  south-wind,  Il-ma-tar,  the  daughter  of  the  air,  Kaleva- 
tar,  the  daughter  of  Kaleva.^  Thus  Istar  means  the  '  daughter 
of  the  mountain,'  who  became  the  *  daughter  of  heaven"*  when 
the  heaven  was  likened  to  a  mountain  overarching  the  earth, 
as  the  Egyptian  goddess  of  heaven.  Nut,  bends  her  body,  with 
her  fingertips  touching  the  ground,  over  her  husband  Geb, 
meaning  *  the  convex  earth,'  *  But  as  Shuk-us  and  Sukh  she 
is  the  daughter  of  the  raining  or  wet  {suk)  heaven  and  of  the 
wet  mountain  ;  and  Akkadian  mythological  geography  calls 
this  mountain,  which  it  makes  the  cradle  of  the  human  race, 
Khar-Sak-kurra.  This  means  the  wet  {sak)  entrails  (khar)  of 
the  mountain  of  the  East  {kurra\^  or  the  mother  earth  made 


'  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  'Fir  Vast,  12;  Introduction;  S.B.E.,  vol.  xxiii. 
pp.  92,  97. 

'  R.  Brown,  junr.,  F.S.A.,  'Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,*  Proceedings  of  the 
Society  of  Biblical  Arc hccologyy  Feby.  1890  ;  Note  to  Star  No.  v. 

'  See  Illustration  in  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Alythohgie  der  Alien 
j€.gypier^  p.  211. 

*  Lenormant,  Chaldccan  Magic,  p.  308,  gives  viscera-entrails  as  one  of  the 
meanings  of  this  Akkadian  root  khar.  Kurra  means  the  East,  as  well  as  a 
mountain  (Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic,  p.  169  ;  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar 
Syllabary ^  No.  399).  Khar  also  means  in  Akkadian  and  Ostiak  *  the  ox ' 
(Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic,  p.  302),  and  sak  means  chief,  so  that  the 
ox  '  the  chief  mountain  of  the  East,'  is  another  meaning  of  Khar-sak-kurra,  a 


144  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

pregnant  by  the  rains  of  heaven,  and  this  must  have  been  the 
original  idea  formed  of  the  divine  Istar.  It  is  from  this 
mountain  that  the  god  Adar  must  have  got  the  sacred  stone, 
the  begetter  of  fire  and  of  life  fostered  by  heat,  called  in  an 
Akkadian  hymn  to  Adar,  the  *shu '  stone,  the  precious  stone, 
the  strong  stone,  the  snake  stone,  the  mountain  stone .^  It  is  this 
stone  which  is  still  in  Hindu  images  of  the  sacred  lotus  enclosed 
within  its  leaves.  These,  when  folded  together  as  the  bud, 
depict  the  mother-mountain  as  ready  to  open  when  quickened 
by  the  life-giving  rain  poured  down  from  the  ark  of  clouds, 
the  water-jar  which,  in  these  mythical  images,  is  hung  above 
the  lotus.  It  is  this  rain  which  gives  to  the  sacred  lotus  the 
seed,  the  germ  of  life  on  earth,  and  it  is  the  maker  of  the  rain, 
the  heavenly  seed,  which  is  the  divine  lotus  called  Push-kara 
the  maker  {hard)  of  Push,  the  black  bull,  who  was  first,  as  we 
shall  see,  the  alligator,  or  the  fourteen  stars  of  the  constellation 
Draco  round  the  pole ;  in  other  words,  the  god  of  time,  who 
marked  the  lunar  phases,  who  makes  the  rain-cloud.  It  is  this 
bull  which,  in  modem  images,  bears  the  lotus  on  its  back  and 
infuses  life  into  it  by  the  stalk.  This  pregnant  mountain  of 
the  Shu-stone  was  to  the  Akkadians  the  central  point  of  the 
earth,  shaped  like  a  boat  turned  upside  down,^  the  tortoise 
earth  of  the  race  of  the  Kushites,  the  sons  of  the  tortoise 
(kush).  Below  it  was  its  wrw,  or  root,  this  was  the  stalk  of 
the  lotus  invoked  in  the  Zendavesta  as  the  golden  instrument 
of  Mount  Saokanta,  explained  by  the  commentator  to  mean  the 
golden  tube  bringing  from  the  root  of  the  earth  to  the 
mountain-top  the  dew  and  rain  which  the  winds  are  to  carry 
over  the  earth  .^  Mount  Saokanta,  whose  name  contains  the 
root  sak^  is  also  called  Ushi-dhau,  the  mountain  of  the  East 

meaning  which  shows  the  same  process  of  mythological  transference  as  made 
Is-is  the  *  mother-mountain '  into  the  *  mother-cow.* 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Appendix  iv. ;    Hymns  to  the  Gods, 
i.  27,  p.  480. 

*  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic ^  p.  151. 

*  Darmesteter,   Zendavesta  Khorshed  Nydyish^   8;    S.B.E., 'vol.    xxiii. 
p.  352,  note  3. 


ESSAY  III  145 

(u^Aa).  It  is  on  it,  as  the  Zendavesta  tells  us,  the  sacred 
river  Haetumant  rises  and  flows  to  the  lake  of  the  tortoise 
Kasha-va,  the  modem  sea  of  Zarah.  The  land  watered  by 
this  river  and  lake  was  the  mother-land  of  the  Kavi  Kaush, 
the  wise  {kavi)  tortoise  (hish)  kings,  and  it  was  there  that 
Eavad,  the  mythic  father  of  the  race,  was  picked  up  as  a  child, 
when  abemdoned  like  Moses,  by  Uzava,  the  goat-god  Uz, 
called  Tumaspa,  or  the  *  horse  of  darkness  "*  (tum).^  It  is  called 
in  the  Bundahish  Sauka  vastan,  or  the  place  of  the  Saokas  or 
Saukas,  the  dwellers  in  the  wet  (saka)  land,  it  is  placed 
between  Turkestan  and  Chinistan  (China)  outside  the  seven 
confederated  States  of  Iran,  six  of  which  are  grouped  round 
the  central  state  Khvaniras,  the  Hvani-ratha  of  the  Zend- 
avesta, whence  the  sons  of  Aim,  the  bull,  were  borne  on  the 
back  of  the  ox  Sar-saok  ^  over  the  whole  world.^  The  king 
of  Saukavastan  was  Aghraeratha,  half-man  and  half-bull, 
meaning  the  foremost  {aghra)  chariot  (rcUha)^  the  son  of  Pash- 
ang,  the  black-bull,  and  he  was  called  also  Gopatshah,  or  king 
of  the  cows.*  These  sons  of  the  cow  came  to  India  as  the 
Grotamas,  or  sons  of  the  cow  {go\  and  the  black  cloud  bull 
Pushan  is  called  in  the  Brahmanas  Pasupati,  the  god  and 
lord  (pati)  of  cattle  (pasu).^  The  Gotamas  are  one  of  the 
priestly  castes  of  the  Rigveda,  and  it  is  from  their  traditions 
that  the  Brahmins  call  the  sub-sections  of  their  caste  Go-tras, 
or  cow-pens.    They  were  the  earliest  professional  priests,  and 

*  West,  BundaJiish,  xxxi.  23.  Darmesteter's  Zetidavesia  Farvardin  Vast, 
131  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  V.  p.  136 ;  vol.  xxiii.  p.  221. 

2  The  name  of  the  Ox  Sar-saok  seems  to  be  derived  from  the  northern  rain- 
god  Sar,  whose  theology  is  discussed  in  p.  161,  and  Sak,  the  wet-god,  the 
Southern  rain-god. 

*  West,  Bundahish^  xxix.  4,  13;  xvii.  4.  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta^  Intro- 
duction, 7,  note  4  ;  Vendiddd  Fargard^  xix.  39 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  pp.  116,  120; 
lix.  62 ;  vol.  iv.  p.  216. 

*  West,  Bundahishy  xxix.  5 ;  S.B.E.  voL  v.  p.  117,  note  6. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  iii.  9,  I,  10 ;  iii.  I,  4,  9  ;  i.  7»  3»  8  ;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxvi  pp.  219,  22  ;  vol.  xii.  p.  201.  PQshan  is  named,  vol.  xxvi.  p.  219, 
among  the  eleven  other  gods  headed  by  Prajapati,  the  lord  {pati)  of  a  former 
{pra)  race  {ja)  to  whom  living  victims  were  offered. 

10 


146  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

it  was,  according  to  the  Mahabharata,  the  Gotama  priest, 
called  the  Rishi  Chandra  (the  moon)  Kushika  (of  the 
Kushikas),  who  gave  the  king  of  Maghada  a  miraculously 
born  son,  by  giving  a  mango  (am),  which  fell  into  his  lap 
when  in  a  state  of  ecstatic  meditation,  to  his  two  queens, 
Ambika  and  Amvalika,  daughters  of  the  king  of  Kashi 
(Benares),  the  Kushika  capital.  Each  queen  bore  half  a  child, 
and  as  the  two  parts  were  bound  together  by  an  old  woman 
called  J dra,  old  age,  the  child  was  named  Jara-sandha,  or 
the  junction  (sandhi)  by  old  age.  This  means  that  the 
two  united  races  of  Kushikas  and  Maghadas,  over  whom  he 
ruled  as  king,  were  united  by  lapse  of  time,  and  this  union 
made  them,  like  the  king  Jara-sandha  of  the  Mahabharata, 
imperial  rulers  of  India,  till  they  were  ousted  by  the  victory 
of  the  Pandavas.^  This  land,  ruled  by  the  united  tribes  of 
Kushikas,  M aghadas,  and  Gotamas  was  that  called  by  Hindu 
geographers  Saka-dvTpa,  said  in  the  M atsya  Purana,  to  be 
the  land  of  the  mountain  whence  Indra  gets  the  rain,*  that 
is,  of  the  mountain  called  Khar-sak-kurra,  Ushidhau,  and 
Saokanta.  This  mountain  stood  as  the  meeting  point  of  the 
two  confederacies  of  the  patriarchal  tribes,  the  bull  races  who 
trace  their  descent  to  the  father,  and  the  matriarchal-cow 
races  who  trace  their  descent  to  their  mother.  Each  con- 
federacy is  formed  by  six  kingdoms  surrounding  a  seventh, 
or  ruling  kingdom,  in  the  centre.  This  in  the  Iranian  or  bull 
federation  is  Khavaniras  or  Hvaniratha,  and  in  India,  or  the 
cow-kingdom,  Jambu-dvipa,  or  the  land  of  the  Jambu  tree ; 
that  is  to  say,  central  India,  the  home  of  the  Jambu  {Eugenia 
jambuland)  the  fruit  tree  of  the  jungle  forests.  It  is  the 
rains  of  Saka,  or  the  wet  land  of  Northern  India,  which  come 
with  the  most  unvarying  regularity,  and  it  was  these  which 
made  the  parent-mountain  of  the  twin  confederacies  pregnant. 
This  was  the  land  of  the  rain-god  Shukra,  the  earliest  name 

^  Mahabharata  Sabha  {kaja  suyarambhd)  Parva,  xvii.  pp.  54,  57.     Sabha 
(Jdrd-sandha-badha)  Parva,  xxiv. 
*  Sachau's  Alberuni's  Ittdia^  vol.  i.  chap.  xxiv.  p.  252. 


ESSAY  III  147 

of  Indra,  used  both  in  the  Rigveda  ^  and  Mahabharata.  In 
the  latter  Shukra,  called  the  high  priest  of  the  Dunavas  and 
Ashuras,  says,  *  It  is  I  who  pour  down  rain  for  the  good  of 
creatures,  and  also  nourish  the  annual  plants  which  sustain 
all  living  things.' ^  He  is  also  called  Ushana,  and  is  the 
kavi-ushana  of  the  Rigv'eda.^  The  Brahmanas  also  call  the 
Soma  plant  Ushana  ;  and  Soma,  the  moon,  is  said  to  be  the 
Vritra  or  enclosing  snake  (from  vri^  to  enclose),  whose  body  is 
the  mountains  and  rocks  on  which  the  Soma  plant  Ushana 
grows.*  Ushana,  or  the  god  (ana)  Ush,  reproduces  one 
of  the  names  of  Is-tar,  U-sha.  Its  ideogram  ^^  means 
^  (tt)  the  lord  of  ^  (sha)  five,^  or  of  the  five  seasons 
of  the  Indian  year  and  of  the  year  of  the  Persian  Gulf; 
the  rainy  season,  autumn,  winter,  spring,  and  the  burning 
summer.  They  are  all  ruled  by  the  rain-god,  whose  name 
Shuk-ra  is  a  form  of  the  Akkadian  Shuk-us  or  Istar.  But 
as  Istar  is  a  name  of  Finnic  origin,  so  also  is  Ush-a  or  Ush- 
ana, for  Castren  tells  us  that  that  Ural  Altaic  rain  and 
thunder-god  was  called  Kave-Ukko,®  and  this  name  shows  us 
that  the  Vedic  word  kavi,  meaning  wise,  and  the  root  A:i/, 
from  which  it  is  derived,  is  of  Finnic  origin,  brought  to  India 
by  the  Finnic  magicians,  who  became  the  Maghadas  of 
Indian  history.  This  name  Ukko  is  shown,  by  the  change 
fixjm  the  guttural  into  the  sibilant,  marking  Northern  words 
introduced  into   Sanskrit^   to  be  the  original  whence  the 

^  Rigveda,  viii.  45,  10,  and  also  in  other  places. 
'  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sanibhava)  Parva,  Ixxx.  p.  245. 
»  Rigveda,  i.  83,  5,  51,  1 1. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  iii.  4,  3,  13;  iv.  2,  5,  15  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp. 
100,  314. 

*  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary,  Nos.  329,  394,  448. 

*  Castren,  Kleine  Schriften,  Petersburg,  1862,  p.  25.  De  Gubernatis  die 
TTiiere,  German  translation,  Leipzig,  1874,  p.  113,  note. 

'  Thot^h  the  change  affects  words  which  have  become  merged  in  the 
popular  dialect  of  the  fused  races,  where  the  tendency  to  soften  guttural 
asperities  was  most  active,  it  frequently  does  not  affect  others,  which  like  kavi, 
have  been  maintained  in  their  original  form  by  the  descendants  of  the  Northern 
races  who  first  brot^ht  them  to  India. 


148  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Akkadian,  Zend,  and  Sanskrit  Usha  was  derived,  and  the 
name  Uk-ko  must  first  have  been  Uk-ku,  the  great  (uk) 
placer  or  begetter  (Atm),^  and  from  this  it  appears  that  the 
original  form  of  the  root  sfiu  was  the  Finnic  ku^  the  name 
brought  by  these  Northern  settlers  among  the  Australioid 
traders  of  the  South,  and  used  by  them  to  denote  the  father- 
god.  It  is  this  root  which  appears  in  the  Finnic  ku-ta  or 
ku-Uj  the  moon,  a  name  which,  like  Kave,  they  brought  with 
them  to  India.  Kavi  Ushana  was  the  father  of  Devayani, 
or  the  angel  {deva)  daughter  of  Ya,  who  became  the  wife  of 
Yayati,  the  reduplicated  Ya  or  la,  and  the  mother  of  the 
twin  mother-tribes  of  the  Yadava,  the  people  whose  god  is 
Ya,  and  the  Tur-vasu,  those  whose  creating  and  generating 
god  (vcisu)  is  Tur.  Tur,  as  I  shall  show,  was  first  the 
house-pole,  and  afterwards  the  rain-pole  of  the  hill  bamboo 
(kichaka)  set  up  by  the  god  Vasu  on  the  Sakti  mountains, 
which  became  the  rain-pole  or  Ashera  of  the  Jews.  This 
god  Vasu,  the  Indian  snake-god  Vasuki  was  originally  the 
Northern  spring-god,  whose  name  appears  in  the  Greek 
name  for  spring,  Vesar,  which  became  eap,  after  the  elision  of 
the  digamma,  and  he  was  apparently  the  father-god  of  the 
Basque  or  Vask  race.  But  these  deductions  of  mythic  his- 
tory, based  on  the  idea  of  the  rain-god  as  the  begetting  god,, 
are  the  product  of  a  later  and  more  metaphysical  age  than 
that  of  the  earliest  students  of  Nature,  who  deduced  the 
origin  of  life  from  physical  generation  and  conception.  To 
the  totemistic  shepherd  tribes  of  the  dawn  of  thought 
the  mountain  was  their  mother,  and  they  thought  that  the 
special  qualities  which  marked  them  as  a  separate  race,  were 
infused  into  and  incorporated  with  their  frames,  when  they 
fed  on  tlieir  animal  father  the  totem  of  the  tribe  at  the 
solemn  tribal  festivals.^      This   animal  was   the  Akkadian 

*  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  173,  462 ;  Lenormant's 
Chaldctan  Afagic,   p.  305,  root  ku,  to  place. 

'  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites^  Lect.  vii.  p.  229,  and  the 
descriptions  of  sacrificial  feasts ;  Amos  iv.  4 ;  Hosea  viii.  13 ;  Isaiah 
XXX.  29 ;  I  Sam.  ix.  12-25  ;  Neh.  viii.  10. 


ESSAY  III  149 

Shu-hu,  the  mountain  goat,  sacred  to  Mul-lil,  the  earth- 
god,  the  lord  of  sorcery  (lil).  It  is  in  this  name  that  we 
find  both  of  the  later  forms  of  the  root  shii^  to  beget. 
The  sacred  goat  was  also  called  Zur,i  which  means  also 
rain,  and  Shu-ga,^  or  the  animal  possessed  of  shu  or 
generative  power.  It  was  the  totemistic  father  of  the  trad- 
ing Shus ;  and  this  descent  is  a  m)rthical  record  of  an  in- 
dubitable fact,  that  trade  began  by  the  interchange  of  the 
produce  of  the  flocks  of  the  mountain  shepherds  with  the 
crops  of  the  tillers  of  the  soil  dwelling  on  the  lower  moun- 
tain slopes  and  the  plain  lands.  Shu-hu  became  the  goat- 
god,  Uz,  whose  name,  like  that  of  Usha,  seems  to  be  a 
softened  form  of  the  earlier  Uk-ku,  who  watches  the  revolu- 
tions of  the  solar  disc  on  Babylonian  monuments.^  All 
Akkadian  priests  were  clothed  in  goat-skins  as  priests  of 
Uz,  and  it  was  another  form  of  the  mountain-goat, 
the  black  antelope  buck  Rishya,  which  gave  to  the 
Hindu  Brahmins  their  name  of  Rishi,*  and  the  official  dress 
of  black  antelope  skins,  which  all  Brahmin  students  are 
ordered  to  wear  in  the  law  books;  the  Akkadian  dress  of 
goat-skins  being  assigned  to  Vaishya,  and  the  skin  of 
the  spotted  deer  to  Kshatriya  students.^  It  is  on  a 
black  antelope  skin  that  Soma  is  placed  in  the  Soma 
cart  at  the  Soma  sacrifice,  and  it  is  bought  by  giving 
the  seller  a  she-goat,  ®  and  to  Vedic  writers  the  antelope, 
like  the  goat  in  other  mythic  histories,  is  the  type  of 
animal  lust.^ 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1 887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  285,  note  3. 

*  Ibid.  p.  286,  note  2. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  285. 

^  But  Rishya,  the  antelope,  is  not  linguistically  related  to  the  mountain- 
goat  ;  Rishya  is  a  name  formed  from  Riksha,  the  bear,  showing  that  the 
antelope  race  were  once  sons  of  the  bear. 

"  Buhler,  Gautama^  i.  16;  Apostamba^  i.  I,  3,  3,  5,  and  6;  S.B.E. 
vol.  ii.  pp.  I74and  10. 

•  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,  iii.  3,  4,  i  ;  iii.  3,  3,  9  ;  S.  B.  E.  \  vol.  xxvi.  pp. 

71.  75. 
'  Zimmer,  Altindisches  Leben^  chap.  iii.  p.  82  ;  Atharva-veda,  iv.  4,  5,  7. 


150  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

But  Usha  and  the  goat-god  only  tell  us  of  the  male  side  of 
the  bisexual  Istar,the  pair  of  gods  worshipped  by  the  Northern 
shepherds ;  one  of  these  was  Is-tar  of  Erech,  the  Southern 
mother-goddess,  the  virgin-mother  of  Dumu-zi,  the  son 
(dumu)  of  life  (zi)^  a  name  contracted  from  Dumu-zi-apzu, 
the  son  (dumu)  of  the  spirit  or  life  {zi)  of  the  watery  abyss 
ap'Zu\  who  is  also  called  one  of  the  six  sons  of  la.^  This 
name  was  changed  by  the  Semites  to  Tammuz.  A  bilingual 
hymn,  telling  of  his  birth  in  Eridu,  under  the  tree  of  life, 
transports  us  to  a  different  atmosphere  from  that  of  the 
mother-mountain  of  the  North.  It  is  this  tree, '  whose  seat 
is  in  the  centre  of  the  earth,'  which  was  the  couch  of  Zi-kum, 
the  giver  of  the  breath  of  life,  the  primaeval-mother,  and  it 
overshadowed  the  temple  home  of  the  mighty  earth-mother, 
*into  which  no  man  hath  entered.''  This  was  the  birthplace 
of  the  son  of  life,  bom  of  a  virgin-mother,  without  the  aid 
of  a  mortal  father.^  But  Eridu,  the  place  of  his  birth, 
according  to  this  hymn,  was  the  offspring  of  Erech  or 
Unuki,  as  we  are  told  in  Genesis  that  Irad  (Eridu)  was  the 
son  of  Enoch  (Umiki).^  Tlie  name  Eridu  is  contracted  from 
Eri-duga,  the  holy  city  (Eri  or  Ir) ;  and  it  is  sacred  to 
la-Khan  or  la,  the  fish  who  was  first  la,  the  serpent.*  It  was 
as  the  fish-god  that  la  came  to  Eridu  in  the  mother-ship 
Ma.  But  Eridu,  the  great  Euphratean  port,  founded  on 
foreign  commerce,  and  the  interchange  witli  other  countries 
of  the  surplus  products  of  skilled  agriculturists  and  handi- 
craftsmen, must  be  a  city  of  a  much  later  date  than  that 
which  was  the  birthplace  of  the  first  son  of  life ;  and  the 
sacred  grove,  where  he  was  bom,  according  to  the  Akkadian 
legend,  must  have  been  one  in  the  country  whence  la  was 
brought  to  Eridu   as  its  founder  in  the  mother-ship,  the 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect-  iv.  p.  232. 

*  Ibid,  p.  238. 

^  Lect.  iii.  p.  185  ;  Gen.  iv.  17,  18. 

*  Lenormant,    Chaldaan  Magics  p.    203  ;   Sayce,   Hibbert    Lectures  for 
1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  184. 


ESSAY  III  151 

country  where  the  tree-mother  was  looked  on  as  the  mother 
of  all  life  ;  and  this  country  as  I  shall  prove  presently,  was 
India.  The  name  of  Istar,  as  the  mother  of  Dumu-zi,  was 
Tsir-du  or  Shir-du,^  the  holy  (du  or  du-ga)  snake  {tsir)^ 
and  she  was  also  called  by  the  Sumerians  Shir-gam,  the 
encircling  {gam)  snake  (tsir)^  and  another  of  her  names  as 
the  goddess-mother  was  Dav-kina.  The  two  ideograms  of 
Dav-kina,  called  in  Akkadian  Shus,  or  the  mother-Shu 
^  and  -g-,3  and  those  for  Tsir  ^-  yfy<  and  -$J-  yyy<*, 
conclusively  prove  that  Dav-kina,  the  mother,  was  a  snake- 
goddess  of  an  agricultural  race,  for  the  two  signs  ^  and 
^  which  begin  the  ideograms  of  Dav-kina  and  Tsir,  both 
mean  seed,*  and  are  pronounced  as  se^  while  to  the  signs 
for  Dav-kina,  the  seed-mother,  the  ideograms  jyy  and  ^ 
are  added  to  make  the  ideogram  for  Tsir.  These  mean 
three,®  and  lord,^  and  the  sacred  Tsir  means  the  three 
lords  or  kings  (of  the  three  races  bom  from)  the  seed- 
bearing  snake-mother.  But  Istar,  the  mother  of  Erech,  was 
not  only  worshipped  as  the  seed-mother,  but  also  as  A, 
meaning  the  waters,  and  as  A  she  was  the  wife  of  la.  The 
name  la  means  the  house  (/)  of  the  waters  (a),  so  that  to 
call  the  mother-goddess  A  his  wife,  is  merely  a  mythical  way 
of  saying  that  the  mother  of  life  was  the  life-giving  water, 
the  encircling  ocean,  or  the  Midgard  serpent  of  the  Edda, 
It  was  as  the  ocean -mother  that  she  was  called  by  the 
Sumerians  Sirri-gam,  or  Shir-gam,  the  enclosing  snake ;  and 
it  is  in  this  form  that  she  is  the  goddess  Nana  (the  lady), 
one  of  the  names  of  Istar  of  Erech,  who  was  the  mother  of 
the  ocean  called  '  the  snake  or  rope  of  the  great  god,^  the 
river  of  In-nina  the  divine  {In)  lady  {nina),^      It  is  the 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  237. 
'  Ibid,  Lect.  iii.  p.  178,  note. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Granwtar  Syllabary,  No.  321. 

*  Ibid.  No.  324.  ^  Ibid,  No.  320. 

*  Ibid.  No.  446.  "  Ibid.  No.  329. 

®  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for   1887,    I-^ct.    iii.   p.  178,  note  ;    Led.  ii. 
p.  116,  note  I. 


152  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

mother-ocean  whicli  supplies  water  to  the  urn,  or  root  of 
the  mother-mountain,  and  it  is  from  it  tliat  the  Hindu 
gods,  headed  by  Vasuki,  who  held  the  rope,  churned  the 
water  of  life  (amrifa)  by  Mount  Mandara,  tlie  heavenly 
chuming-stafF;  and  it  is  on  the  surface  of  this  mother-ocean 
tliat  the  land,  of  which  the  mother-mountain  is  the  centre, 
floats. 

We  thus  learn  from  this  review  of  the  chronology  of 
the  various  forms  of  the  goddess  called  Istar  or  Suk,  that 
she  was  the  supreme  mother- goddess  of  a  composite  race 
formed  from  the  union  of  three  earlier  races.  The 
first  of  these  called  themselves  the  sons  of  the  mother- 
tree,  encircled  by  the  girdling  snake ;  the  second,  the  sons 
of  the  mother-mountain  and  the  father-goat;  while  the 
third  were  the  children  of  the  rain-god,  who  returns  to 
the  mother-ocean  by  the  rivers,  the  life-giving  waters, 
drawn  from  it  by  the  golden  pipe  leading  from  the 
root  (uru)  to  the  clouds,  which  wreath  its  top.  These 
are  the  heavenly  sieve  (pavitra\  which  distribute  it  over 
the  earth  as  the  rains  of  the  rainy  season,  the  heavenly 
Soma. 

This  series  of  conceptions  must  have  been  born  in  India, 
the  land  of  periodical  rains  and  mountain  forests,  for  the 
mother-tree  could  never  have  been  conceived  in  the  brains 
of  those  dwelling  in  the  treeless  lands  of  Northern  and 
Central  Asia.  Those  who  framed  it  must  have  belonged  to 
the  Mongoloid  and  Australioid  tribes  of  South-eastern 
Asia  and  Southern  India,  who  called  themselves  by  names 
which,  like  those  of  the  Marj'a  or  tree  {marom)  Gonds,  of  the 
Mons,  or  mountain  race  of  the  Irawaddy,  the  Mundas  of 
Chotii  Nagpore,  and  of  the  Ooraons,  the  Orang,  or  forest- 
men  of  the  same  country,  show  that  they  did  not,  like  the 
pastoral  tribes,  claim  descent  from  totcmistic  male  ancestors, 
but  from  tlie  mountain  and  forest  trees,  and  many  of  these 
tribes  have  always  been,  when  near  the  sea,  both  skilled  and 
daring  navigators,  like  the  Mughs  of  Bengal,  the  Dyaks  of 


ESSAY  III  153 

Borneo,  and  the  coast  tribes  of  the  Madras  and  Malabar  coasts, 
and  also  willing  emigrants  to  foreign  lands.  These  people,  as 
is  proved  by  the  anthropometric  data  published  in  the  last 
two  volumes  of  Mr.  Risley'^s  Tribes  and  Castes  ofBengal^  show 
much  more  affinity  with  the  dolichocephalic  Australioid  races, 
whose  remains  predominate  in  those  of  the  Palaeolithic  Stone 
Age  in  Europe,  than  with  the  brachycephalic  Mongoloid 
tribes  of  North-eastern  Asia ;  and  it  must,  as  I  show  in 
Essay  ii.,  have  been  they  who  introduced  organised  agricul- 
ture into  Europe.  The  marriage-customs  of  the  great 
majority  of  the  agricultural  races  of  Bengal,  prove  that  they 
have  all  passed  through  the  stage  of  civilisation  in  which  the 
tree  was  thought  to  be  their  mother,  for  the  lk.gdi  and 
Bauri  tribes  are  wedded  in  an  arbour  made  of  the  branches  of 
the  Sal-tree  (Shorea  robusta\  after  they  have  been  first 
married  to  a  Mahua-tree  (Bassia  lutifolia)  ;  and  this  Mahua- 
tree  is  the  husband-tree  also  of  Kunni,  Lobar,  Mahili, 
Munda,  and  Santal  brides,  while  the  Bagdis  place  a  pool  of 
water,  their  common  mother,  between  the  wedded  pair.^ 
Others  again,  like  the  Binjhias,  Kharwars,  and  Kautias, 
make  the  Mango-tree  the  husband-tree.^  But  when  we 
examine  the  rules  for  the  organisation  of  the  first  village 
communities  founded  by  the  earliest  agricultural  races  in 
forest  clearings,  we  find  that  this  custom  of  marriage  to  a 
tree  is  one  that  succeeded  to  a  state  of  society  which  did  not 
know  of  marriage  or  the  family.  The  village-makers  of  this 
early  Stone  Age  carved  their  villages  out  of  the  forests,  just 
aii  their  successors  now  do,  by  stripping  the  trees  of  their 
bark  with  their  stone  celts,  and  burning  the  timber  when 
dried  ;  for  the  making  of  fire  by  friction  was  discovered  at  a 
very  early  age  by  the  dwellers  in  the  damp  forests  of  the 
rainy  districts  of  the  far  East.  But  in  the  centre  of  the 
village  site,  a  number  of  the  original  forest  trees  were,  and 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  i.  pp.  39,  80,  531  ;   vol.  ii.  pp. 
23*  40,  102,  229. 
^  Ibid,  vol  i.  pp.  136,  201  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  201. 


154  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

are,  still  always  left  standing  as  the  sarna  or  grove,  sacred  to 
the  gods  of  life.  The  grove  thus  consecrated  was  the  centre 
of  the  village — the  Greek,  Temenos  (from  temno  to  cut), 
which  became  afterwards  the  Akropolis.  This  was  the  holy 
shrine  cut  off  from  the  unproductive  forest,  tlie  abode  of 
demons  and  malicious  ghosts,  by  the  cultivated  land  which 
surrounds  it,  the  encircling  and  guarding  snake — the  proto- 
type of  the  ocean-mother  of  the  seafaring  sons  of  the  tree- 
mother.  Under  the  shade  of  this  sarna  is  the  akra,  or 
dancing-ground,  where  the  maidens  of  the  village  still  dance 
the  seasonal  dances  performed  to  secure  good  harvests,  and 
to  thank  the  gods  for  those  gathered  in.  But  in  earlier 
times  these  dances  were  danced  by  the  young  men  and 
maidens  of  different  villages,  a  custom  preserved  by  the  Ho 
Kols,  among  whom  the  girls  of  one  village  always  dance 
with  the  men  of  another,^  while  among  the  hill  Bhuiyas, 
courtships  are  always  carried  on  by  the  young  men  of  the 
village  uniting  to  pay  visits  to,  and  dance  with,  the  girls  of  a 
neighbouring  township ;  ^  and  the  hill  Binjhias  and  Kandlis 
only  allow  marriages  l)etween  men  and  women  of  different 
villages.^  Hence  the  object  of  the  village  dances  was  not 
only  to  secure  the  aid  of  the  gods  of  life  for  the  welfare  of 
the  coming  crops,  but  they  were  also  part  of  the  system  of 
exogamous  alliances  whicli  bound  together  all  the  villages  of 
each  province  or  parha  of  a  federated  State  by  the  ties  of 
a  common  defensive  and  offensive  union.  These  villages, 
which  exactly  correspond  to  our  parishes,  and  the  German 
gemeinde^  covered  a  large  area,  most  of  which  was  at  first 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.  p.  328. 

-  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  114. 

*  Ibid.  vol.  i.  pp.  135,  399,  400.  Khand  society  is  constituted  on  a 
patriarchal  basis,  but  this  rests  on  matriarchal  foundations  existing  before 
the  Khands,  whose  name  means  the  swordsmen,  conquered  Orissa.  They 
altered  the  original  matriarchal  customs,  which  made  the  village  the 
unit,  to  meet  theirs,  which  placed  the  family  as  the  ground -work  of  the 
tribe.  Hence  they  divided  the  gochis  or  villages  into  klambus^  or  joint- 
families. 


ESSAV  III  155 

unoccupied  woodland.  For,  like  those  who  now  settle  villages 
in  forest  tracts,  the  first  founders  were  obliged  to  provide 
space  for  hamlets  or  ofF-shoots  from  the  parent  village.  In 
a  prosperous  commune  all  the  land  that  can  be  conveniently 
cultivated  from  the  original  centre  is  soon  taken  up,  and 
those  who  want  fresh  land  near  their  work  must  betake 
themselves  to  the  village  waste,  and  there  found  a  fresh 
centre  affiliated  to  that  from  which  they  came.  This  pro- 
cess of  internal  gro\*i;h  could  only  go  on  when  the  village 
was  at  peace  with  its  neighbours,  and  when  all  those  adjoin- 
ing it,  and  allied  with  it,  could  provide  for  the  common 
defence  a  force  sufficient  to  guard  them  from  attacks  of 
invading  enemies.  These  alliances  also  must,  in  order  to 
secure  the  continued  prosperity  of  the  federated  communities, 
be  lasting,  and  the  means  by  which  they  were  cemented  was 
the  institution  of  tlie  custom  of  exogamous  unions  between 
the  sexes,  and  of  social  gatlierings  for  the  promotion  of  good 
fellowship.  But  these  unions  between  the  sexes  were  not 
like  those  of  the  patriarclial  age,  when  the  family  A\as  the 
unit — marriages  between  individuals — but  the  man  ijige  of 
each  village  to  all  its  federated  allies.  The  women  of  each 
township  were  its  mothers,  who  must  remain  at  home,  look 
after  the  children,  help  in  farming,  and  do  domestic  work, 
but  to  secure  the  union  between  the  village  and  its  neigli- 
bours,  and  to  prevent  the  isolation  that  would  result  if  the 
fathers  of  the  village  children  lived  in  the  village,  it  was 
made  a  rule  that  they  must  belong  to  an  outside  village, 
"^riius  the  men  of  every  village  within  each  confederacy  could 
legally  become  the  fathers  of  the  children  of  the  women  of 
all  villages  except  their  own,  and  this  primitive  jus  connubii 
was  the  bond  which  retained  the  members  of  the  confederated 
villages  in  an  indissoluble  union.  For  if  any  of  them  emi- 
grated to  neighbouring  unions,  he  was  obliged  to  secure  a 
formal  admission  before  he  could  there  acquire  the  privileges 
he  had  relinquished  in  his  maternal  state,  and  such  transfers 
were  not  readily  granted.     It  was  on  these  rules  of  internal 


IWJ  TlIK  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tniitiu^cMiU'iit  tlmt  the  whole  domestic  policy  of  each  State 
wiM  founded,  while  its  foreign  policy  was  based  on  the  juJt 
rnrrratura'^  or  the  concession  of  rights  to  attend  their  mar- 
k<'t.H,  given  to  peaceable  and  well-conducted  neighbours. 
WitJiin  each  township  the  men  and  women  were  brothers 
iirid  Mihters,  l)etween  whom  marriage  was  impossible;  and  the 
birth  of  the  village  children  was  provided  for  by  inviting  the 
men  of  luljoining  villages  to  come  to  the  village  dances, 
wUcu  the  unions  were  consummated  in  the  shades  of  the 
V 11  luge  grove.  Hence  all  the  children  of  each  village  were 
the  children  of  the  village  mother-tree,  and  the  Saturnalia 
(felel)rating  their  procreation,  were  looked  on  by  the  states- 
men of  matriarchal  times,  as  they  are  still  by  Kol  Mankis 
of  the  present  day,  as  a  safeguard  of  the  national  welfare, 
which  maintained  mutual  good  feeling  and  fellowship  be- 
tween all  those  l)elonging  to  the  allied  confederacy.  But 
this  system  of  lil>erty,  restrained  by  internal  laws,  was  one 
which  appeared  to  those  who  were  educated  in  a  different 
system  of  morality  to  be  unregulated  and  disgraceful  licence  ; 
and  it  is  this  which  is  denounced  by  the  authors  of  tlie 
M ahil  bharata  in  a  passage  which  tells  how  Sahadeva,  the 
IVinduva,  one  of  the  avatars  of  the  fire-god  of  the  Nortli, 
c<mquered  Southern  India,  called  the  land  of  Mahish-matl, 
thegreat  (7/1  aAwA)  mother  (7Wfl^/),  where,  it  is  said,  the  women 
were  not  obliged  to  confine  themselves  to  one  luLsband.^  In 
another  passjige,  Karna,  whom  I  shall  show  to  he  the  moon- 
god,  and  who  aj)j>ears  in  the  poem  as  one  of  the  chief 
generals  of  the  Kauravyas,  denounces  the  Vahlika  women  for 
acting  as  Dravidian  wcmien  do  now,  and  indulging  in  what 
lie  calls  indiscriminate  concubinage,  drinking  spirits,  singing 
and  dancing  in  public  places,  and  on  the  ramparts  of  the 
town,  dressed  and  undressed,  and  wearing  garlands.'^  This 
description  accurately  depicts  the   village    dances,   as  seen 

*  Mahabharata  Sabha  {Di^fi/aya)  Parva,  xxxi. 

*  Mahabharata   Kar^a  Parva,   xl.   xlv.    pp.    138,    158.     Muir's  Sanskrit 
Tixts^  vol.  ii.  pp.  4S2-4S4  note  2. 


ESSAY  III  157 

by  a  spectator,  who  finds  in  them  only  what  seem  to  him  to 
be  wipardonable  excesses,  but  fails  to  see  the  legality  which 
underlies  the  apparently  lawless  and  indiscriminate  association 
of  the  sexes  which  takes  place  at  these  tribal  dances. 

The  children  bom  in  these  matriarchal  villages  were,  after 
the  age  when  they  ceased  to  require  a  mother**s  care,  placed 
under  the  guardianship  of  the  village  elders,  their  maternal 
uncles,  and  thus,  at  the  present  day,  all  children  bom  in  the 
Nair  villages  of  Madras,  those  of  the  Naga  races,  of  the 
Ooraons,  Marya  Gronds,  and  Juangs  are  brought  up  apart 
from  their  parents,  the  boys  under  the  care  of  the  village 
elders,  and  the  girls  under  that  of  a  village  matron.  These 
guardians  teach  them  their  duties  as  members  of  the  tribe 
and  village,  and  instruct  them  in  all  the  hereditary  village 
lore,  and  the  village  schools,  found  everywhere  in  India,  were 
the  products  of  the  matriarchal  customs  which  made  the 
maternal  uncles  teachers  of  their  sisters'*  children,  and  it  is 
also  from  this  source  that  the  higher  castes  took  the  idea  of 
providing  gurus  or  religious  teachers  for  each  family.  It 
was  in  this  age  that  the  rule  obser\ed  among  the  Doms, 
Haris,  Juangs,  Pasis,  and  Tantis  of  making  the  sister'^s  son 
the  family  priest  arose,^  and  also  that  observed  among  the 
Cheroos,  when  the  marriage  is  blessed  by  the  maternal 
uncles  of  the  bride  and  bridegroom,  who  pour  holy  water  on 
the  mango-leaf  placed  in  the  mouths  of  the  mothers  of  the 
young  couple  before  the  marriage  procession  leaves  the  bride- 
groom'^s  house.^  It  was  the  emigration  of  these  matriarchal 
races  throughout  all  the  countries  of  South-western  Asia 
and  Southern  Europe  which  not  only  made  tlie  communal 
rule  of  property  which  governed  the  Indian  village  com- 
munities the  most  universally  diffused  type  of  land  tenure, 
and  which  also  made  property  descend  to  the  female  line,  as 
it  does  among  the  Nairs  of  Madras,  among  the  Lycians, 

1  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.  pp.  245,  316 ;  vol.  ii.  pp. 
167,  300. 
-  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  201. 


158  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Cretans,  Dorians,  Athenians,  Lemnians,  Etruscans,  Egyptians, 
Orchomenians,  Loerians,  Lesbians,  Mantinaeans,  and  many 
Asiatic  nations,  as  has  been  proved  by  Morgan  and  Bachofen.^ 
The  customs  of  the  village  dances  in  the  sacred  grove 
survived  in  the  Babylonian  custom  mentioned  by  Herodotus, 
which  obliged  every  married  woman  to  prostitute  herself  in 
the  temple  on  her  marriage  night,  in  the  Saturnalia  of  Rome, 
the  Bacchic  orgies  of  Greece,  the  Corybantian  dances  of 
South-western  Asia,  which  formed  part  of  the  festivals  held 
each  year  to  mourn  over  the  death  of  Tammuz,  the  old  year, 
and  to  celebrate  the  birth  of  the  new  year  which  was  to 
succeed  it,  and  it  was  these  dances  which  were  continued  to  a 
late  period  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  groves  sacred  to 
Venus.  The  ritual  of  the  worship  of  the  Sumerian  goddess 
Istar  of  Erech  was  also  an  outcome  of  these  matriarchal 
festivals,  for  she  was  served,  as  we  are  told  in  the  story  of 
the  plague-demon  Nerra,  '  by  a  chorus  of  festival  girls  and 
maidens  consecrated  to  Istar,**  representing  the  village 
maidens  of  India,  and  '  by  emasculated  priests  carrying 
swords,  razors,  stout  dresses,  and  flint  knives,**  ^  who  reproduce 
the  brothers  of  these  maidens,  who  were  forbidden  to  l)e 
fathers  to  their  children.  It  was  these  matriarchal  tribes 
who,  in  their  progress  westward,  founded  the  Amazonian 
kingdoms  of  Asia  Minor  and  Greece,  and  who  reproduced 
everywhere  the  holy  groves  consecrated  to  the  gods  of 
Greece,  Rome,  Palestine,  and  Asia  Minor,  together  with 
the  worship  of  the  Dryads,  or  spirits  of  the  woods. 
Also  it  was  their  influence  which  sanctified  the  mother- 
tree,  the  tree  of  life,  the  palm-tree  of  Babylonia,  tlie 
sycamore  or  fig-mulberry  of  Egypt,  the  fig-tree  of  the 
Biblical  story  of  the  fall  of  man,  the  olive-tree  of  Greece, 
the  pine,  the  mother-tree  of  the  Northern  Bear  race,  whicli 
has  become  the  Christmas-tree  of  Germany,  and  the  tree 

^  Morgan,  Ancient  Society^  Macmillan  and  Co.,  1877,  chap.  xiv.  pp.  343, 
351.     BsLchofcn,  Die  Afntfer-recA/,  Stuttgart,  186 1. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  pp.  184,  185. 


ESSAY  III  159 

which  is  still  planted  on  the  top  of  every  house  built  in 
South  Grennany.  This  tree  also  plays  a  prominent  part  in 
the  stories  of  the  birth  of  the  Buddha  and  Apollo.  In  the 
first,  Maya,  the  mother  of  Buddha,  was  a  native  of  Kolya, 
the  Kolarian  village  forming  part  of  the  city  of  Kapila-vastu, 
the  city  of  the  Yellow  (kapUa)  race,  to  which  his  father 
belonged.  The  sacred  grove  of  Lumbini  was  the  sartia  or 
holy  grove  common  to  the  united  towns,  and  lay  between 
them.  Maya  went  to  this  grove  when  the  pains  of  childbirth 
drew  near,  and  sought  the  protection  of  the  tree-god  by 
grasping  the  sacred  Sal-tree  {Shorea  robnsta\  the  mother- 
tree  of  the  Dravidian  races  of  India,  and  it  was  while  she  was 
grasping  it  that  her  son  was  bom,^  This  same  incident  of 
the  grasping  of  the  mother-tree  is  reproduced  in  the  story  of 
the  birth  of  Apollo  at  Delos,  only  that  tlie  tree  grasped 
by  Leto  was  not  the  Sal-tree,  but  the  Babylonian  palm- 
tree,  the  tree  of  life,  while  beside  it  stood  the  olive, 
sacred  to  Athene,  and  the  sacred  lake,^  the  reproduc- 
tion of  that  whence  the  Kushite  race  sprang.  That 
these  sons  of  the  mother-tree  were  the  first  organisers  of 
ci\ilised  society  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  it  was  out  of  the 
myth  of  the  central  mother-tree  that  that  of  the  mother- 
mountain,  adopted  by  their  successors,  grew,  for  just  as 
the  mother-tree  is  the  centre  of  the  holy  grove  and  the 
middle  point  of  the  village,  so  is  the  mother-mountain 
the  centre  of  the  tortoise  earth.  But  though  the  grove 
as  the  village  centre  was  an  original  conception  of  the 
Southern  matriarchal  races,  the  centre  tree  and  the 
mother-mountain  were  additions  made  to  the  primal  idea 
by  the  Northern  races,  who  looked  on  the  house,  the  birth- 
place of  the  family,  as  their  national  home,  for  the  central 
tree  was  the  central  pole  of  the  Northern  house  which 
supports  its  rafters. 

^  Fausboll,yif/iZ^a,  vol.  i.  p.  52.     Rhys  Davids,  Buddhist  Birth  Stories, 
p.  66. 
'  Milller,  Die  Dorier,  Book  ii.  chap.  vii.  §  3,  p.  314. 


160  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

This  is  the  god  Gumi  Gosain,  the  central  pole  of  tlie 
house,  round  which  the  Dravidian  Males  and  Mai  Paliarias 
of  the  Raj  Mehal  hills  place  balls  of  clay  representing  their 
ancestors,  and  then  pour  upon  the  ground  the  blood  of  fowls 
and  goats  sacrificed  to  tlie  sun-god  and  earth-mother.^  It 
was  these  Malis  or  Mallis,  whose  name  means  the  mountain 
Mai  (people),  who  gave  their  names  to  Malwa,  Mallarashtra 
or  Mahralita  land,  to  Multan  or  Malli-tana,  the  place 
of  the  Mallis,  the  river  Malini,  on  which  Sakuntala,  the 
mother  of  the  Bharata  race,  was  found,  and  many  other 
Indian  tribe-sites;  and  it  was  after  they  were  fused  with  the 
sons  of  the  tree  tliat  they  placed  their  house-pole  in  the 
village  grove  as  the  central  tree,  and  it  is  there  that  tlie 
Khariiis  place  the  god  Gumi,  to  whom  pigs,  the  animal 
sacred  to  tlie  mother  earth,  are  offered.^  But  these  bloody 
sacrifices  were,  like  those  offered  to  tlie  house-pole,  a  Northern 
institution  of  the  people  who  looked  on  the  sacrificial  animals 
they  ate  as  the  source  whence  they  drew  their  special  tribal 
qualities ;  for  the  primitive  forest  races  only  offered  fruits  and 
flowers  to  tlie  mother-earth,  as  is  proved  by  the  Juang  sacri- 
fices, in  which  fowls  are  offered  to  the  sun,  a  supreme  god 
among  all  the  forest  races  dwelling  in  the  damp  forests  of  the 
rainy  East,  and  only  fruits  to  the  earth.^  Similarly,  the 
Behar  Amats  and  the  Bhandaris,  who  are  in  Orissa  priests 
of  the  Pafich  Devati,  or  five  seasonal  village  goddesses,  only 
offer  to  them  cooked  rice,  cakes,  sweetmeats,  and  parched 
grain  ;*  while  among  theRautias,  at  the  Jitia  Purob  in  Assin, 
the  village  women  only  offer  to  the  twig  of  the  Pepul-tree 
and  the  ear  of  rice  planted  as  the  parent-trees  in  the  court- 
yard of  the  headman  of  the  village,  vermilion,  rice  husked 
without  boiling,  flowers,  and  sweetmeats.^ 

These  mountain  tribes  who  offered  animal  sacrifices,  were 
the  second  of  the  three  primaeval  races.     They  were  a  con- 

*  Rislcy,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  li.  pp.  58,  71. 

'  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  468.  '  Ibid,  vol.  i.  p.  353. 

*  Ibid,  vol.  i.  pp.  18,  94.  *  Ibid,  vol.  ii.  p.  204. 


ESSAY  III  161 

federacy  ruled  by  Ural  Altaic  Finns  who  made  the  mountain 
of  the  East,  the  frontier-mountain  of  the  dividing  chain  of 
the  Himalayas,  whence  the  rivers  began  to  flow  westward  and 
southward,  the  mother-mountain  of  the  united  races  of 
Northern  shepherds  and  Southern  agriculturists,  wlio  called 
the  Shu-hu,  or  mountain  goat,  their  totemistic  father. 

In  the  third  race,  the  children  of  the  rain-god,  we  find  a 
composite  product  of  two  stocks  united  in  the  second  birth- 
land  of  civilised  man,  the  country  of  the  southern  and  western 
slopes  of  the  Caucasus  and  of  the  Phrygian  hills.      One  of 
these  looked  on  the  fire-god  and  the  other  on  the  water-god 
as  their  parent  gods.    They  claimed  to  be  descended  from  the 
rain-cloud  impregnated  by  the  lightning  flash,  the  thunder 
and  wind-god  called  Sar.     This  was  the  tree  and  wind-god 
of  the  Gronds,  called  Maroti  (marom^  a  tree)  or  Hanuman, 
the  great  ape.     Tlie  name  of  this  god  Sar,  reduplicated  as 
Sar-sar,  is  the  Sumerian  name  of  the  god  la,  and  also  of 
Istar ;  ^  and  Shari  was  the  mother-goddess  of  the  rain-cloud 
worshipped  by  the  Armenians  of  Van.     It  was  this  god  who 
became  in  later  theology  Assor,  the  fish-god,  whose  ideogram 
is  the  same  as  that  of  the  Akkadian  Sar,  and  who  is,  as  I 
show  later  on,  the  six  {as)  Sars.     It  was  the  union  of  the 
Southern  agricultural  races  of  India,  who,  by  their  fusion 
with  the  Ural  Altaic  shepherds,  had  become  the  trading 
Shus,  with  the  Northern  Turanian,  or  mixed  Finnic  tribes, 
which  formed  the  confederacy  of  allied  peoples,  the  rulers 
of  India  and  the  Euphratean  countries,  who  called  them- 
selves  the  sons  of  the  tortoise  Kush,  and   looked    on    the 
mother-mountain  of  the  East,  whence  the  rain-god  gets  the 
rain,  as  the  common  centre  whence  they  drew  their  life,  and 
as  the  Akropolis  or  temple  home  of  the  mother-gcddess  of 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  265  note  I,  and  Lect.  iii. 
p.  143,  where  he  shows  that  Sar-sar  is  the  ideogram,  which  was  also  read 
as  Gingiri,  the  Sumerian  name  of  Istar,  the  creatrix.  See  also  Lenormant, 
ChoUdaan  Magic^  p.  334,  note.  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^ 
Nos.  414,  415. 

11 


162  THE  RULING  KACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  world  village,  the  liouse  of  the  Most  High  God.  It  was 
to  this  mother-mountain  that  they  ultimately  transplanted 
the  mother-tree  of  the  Indian  theology,  and  thus  made  the 
mountain-plant  called  Soma  Giristha,  or  Soma,  the  dweller 
{sthd)  on  the  mountains  (girr),  the  plant  sacred  to  the  gods 
of  generation.^  That  this  plant  was  also  a  rain-plant  is 
shown  by  the  epithets  Vrishtivani,  the  rain-loving,  Varshahva, 
and  Varshabhu,  which  mean  the  rain  (varshu)  plant.^  In 
the  Rigveda,  the  season  of  the  year,  that  is,  the  rainy  season, 
is  said  to  be  its  mother,  and  when  bom  from  her  it  goes  at 
once  to  the  water,  in  which  it  thrives.*  Again,  in  other 
hymns,  Parjanya,  the  rain-god,  is  called  the  father  of  the 
mighty  lord  Soma,  which  took  its  place  on  tlie  mountains 
in  the  middle  of  the  earth,*  that  is,  the  mother-mountain  of 
the  East ;  and  the  Soma  which  inebriates  Indra,  the  rain-god, 
and  the  divine  race  is  said  to  *  come  in  a  stream  purified  by 
the  lightning.**  s  This  clearly  denotes  the  coming  of  Soma 
as  the  time  when  the  rains  of  Northern  India  begin  at  the 
summer  solstice.  Manu  says  the  Soma  offerings  are  to  be 
made  at  the  end  of  the  year,  and  that  animal  sacrifices  are 
to  be  offered  at  the  solstices,  called  Turayana;^  and  as 
animal  sacrifices  form  part  of  the  Soma  ritual,  and  as  the 
Soma  festival,  which  opens  with  an  invocation  to  Indra,  the 
rain-god,  as  the  god  of  the  sacrifice,^  is  a  feast  to  the  god 
who  brings  the  rain,  it  must  originally,  like  the  present 
festival  to  Juggemath  at  Puri,  which  is  the  most  universally 
frequented  religious  feast  in  India,  have  been  held  in  the 
hot  weather,  before  the  rainy  season,  in  order  to  secure  good 
rains.     That  it  was  one  in  which   rain  was  prayed  for  is 

1  Rigveda,  ix.  85,  10 ;  Hillebrandt's  Vedische  Mythologies  pp.  354,  389. 
-  Tait,  Samh,  ii.  4,  10,  3 ;  Hillebrandt's  Vedische  Mythologies  p.  55. 
^  Rigveda,  ii.  13,  I. 
*  Ibid,  ix.  82,  3. 

^  Ibid,  ix.  84,  3  ;  Eggeling's  Sat.  Brdh,  Introduction ;  S.  B.  E.  vol.  xxvi. 
pp.  xxii.  xxiii. 
®  BUhler,  Manu.  iv.  26;  vi.  10;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxv.  pp.  133,  200. 
"  Eggeling,  Sat,  firdh,  iii.  3,  4,  18 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  85. 


ESSAY  III  163 

shown  by  tlic  prayer  of  tlie  sacrificcr  during  the  initiation 
ceremony  (diksha)^  when  he  asks  the  gods  to  *  make  the 
crops  full-eared,'  ^  and  by  the  advice  given,  that  to  secure 
good  rain,  one  of  the  oxen  who  draw  the  Soma  cart  should 
\ye  black,*  It  is  the  Indian  year  of  five  seasons  to  which  the 
sacrifice  is  offered,  but  the  first  offering  made  at  the  recep- 
tion of  Soma  is  that  of  a  cake  baked  on  the  fire-altar.*  This 
is  said  to  be  the  mother-earth,  called  in  the  ritual  Aditi,  or 
she  who  is  without  (a)  a  second  (dtii)  the  beginning  of  all 
things,  who  lived  before  man  was  bom,  and  brought  forth 
living  things  to  dwell  on  the  earth  by  her  own  inherent 
vitality.  This  altar  when  consecrated  becomes  Vedi  (know- 
ledge), and  it  is  directed  to  be  made  in  the  form  of  a  woman  ; 
to  measure  a  fathom  on  the  west  side,  and  at  least  three 
cubits  from  west  to  east,  though  it  may  be  more.  It  is  to 
be  constructed  in  the  middle  like  a  woman,  and  to  be  nar- 
rower on  the  east  than  on  the  west  side,  and  to  slope  to  the 
east,  the  holy  quarter  whence  the  rain  and  the  dawn  comes.* 
ITie  altar  when  made  is  consecrated  by  the  Adhvaryu,  the 
ceremonial  priest,  who  sprinkles  it  with  holy  water,  and 
takes  the  sacred  grass  which  is  to  cover  or  thatch  it  from 
the  Agnidhra,  or  fire-priest.  This  grass,  called  the  6arAw, 
is  the  Kusha  grass  (Poa  cynosuroides\  said  by  Hindu  tradi- 
tion to  be  given  by  Kam,  the  god  of  darkness  (Rdma\  to 
his  son  Kush,  the  ancestor  of  the  Kushika,  or  tortoise  race, 
whose  kingdom,  stretching  on  both  sides  of  the  central 
mother-mountain  from  the  Ganges  to  the  Euphrates,  was 
symbolized  in  the  mother-altar.  Seven  sheaves  are  made 
of  this  grass.  Three  of  these,  the  three  races,  arc  used 
for  thatching  the  altar,  three  are  held  by  the  sacri- 
ficer,  his  i^ife,  and  the  priests;  and  the   most   important 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh.  iii.  2,  I,  3;  S.B.E.  p.  33. 

-  Eggeling,  .Sla/.  Brdh.  iii.  4,  II  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  78. 
'  Eggeling,  iii.  4,  i,  14,  15 ;  S.B.E.  p.  88. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  iii.  2,  3,   i,  6,  19;  iii.  7>  2,   i  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi. 

pp.  47.  49»  5J.  175- 

*  lading,  Sat.  Brdh.  L  2,  5,  14-17 ;  S.B.E,  vol.  xii,  pp.  62,  63, 


164  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

sheaf  is  the  fifth,  the  prastara^  or  cleansing  sheaf,^  the 
bunch  of  hyssop  of  the  Jewish  ritual,  representing  the 
tree  of  life.  It  is  made  of  three  united  sheaves,  the  three 
united  seasons,  and  flowering  shoots  are  added  to  each  sheaf.* 
It  denotes  the  cleansing  and  purifying  rains,  and  is  used  in 
prayers  for  rain ;  for  the  sacrificing  priest,  when  asking  for 
rain,  must  hold  the  prastara  in  his  hand  while  he  repeats 
the  prayer,  *0  heaven  and  earth,  may  Mitra  and  Varuna 
favour  thee  (the  sacrificer)  with  rain/*  This  use  of  the 
prastara  enables  us  to  trace  the  origin  of  tribal  sacrifices 
to  those  made  by  the  agricultural  races  to  the  rain-god,  for 
the  prastara  is  the  baresma  of  the  Zend  ritual,  which,  before 
it  took  its  later  shape  of  a  bundle  of  thomless  twigs,  or  a 
cleansing  besom,  was  a  single  twig  or  magic  wand,  *  as  long 
as  a  ploughshare  and  as  thick  as  a  barleycorn,''  usually  cut 
from  a  pomegranate,  date,  or  tamarind-tree.  This  'the 
faithful  man  **  was  to  hold  in  his  hand  while  offering  sacri- 
fices to  '  Ahura  Mazda,  and  the  Golden  Haomas.**  *  In  the 
sacrifice  to  the  New  and  Full  Moon,  which  is  treated  in  the 
Brahmanas  as  the  model  sacrifice,  the  Adhvaryu  gives  the 
prastara  to  the  Brahman  or  priest  of  the  spiritual  father- 
god  Brahma  while  he  is  thatching  the  altar,  takes  it  back 
when  it  is  thatched,  and  holds  it  while  laying  the  fire  on 
the  altar.^  He  lays  round  the  fire  in  the  centre  of  the  altar 
a  triangle  made  of  three  paridhis  or  enclosing  sticks  of 
green  wood,  placing  the  Western  stick  first ;  the  Southern, 
sacred  to  Indra,  second ;  and  the  Northern,  sacred  to  Mitra- 
Varuna,  last.®     These,  in  the  New  and  Full  Moon  ritual,  are 


^  Eggeling,  So/,  Brdh»  i.  3,  3,  4 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  84  note  2. 

'•*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  ii.  5,  i,  18;  S.B.E.  p.  389  note  i. 

^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh.  i.  8,  3,  12;  S.B.E.  p.  241. 

**  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Vettdiddd  Fargard^  xix.  19;  iii.  i;  S.B.E. 
vol.  iv.  pp.  22  note  i,  209. 

^  Eggeling,  .9a/.  Brdh.  i.  3,  3,  5,  12;  Kdty,  ii.  7,  22;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii. 
pp.  86  note  i,  and  87. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat^  Brdh,  i.  3,  4,  2-5  ;  S.B.E.  pp.  50-91. 


ESSAY  III  165 

ordered  to  be  made  of  Palasha  {Buteajrondosa)  wood,^  which, 
as  I  have  shown,  is  the  tree  sacred  to  the  Desauli,  or  village 
god  of  the  Ho  Kols  and  Gonds,  and  whose  leaf  was  brought 
to  earth  with  the  Soma  by  the  Shyena  bird.-  But  the  Soma 
paridhis  must  be  made  of  Karshmarya  (Gmelina  arborea)^^ 
which  is  also  permitted  to  be  used  in  tlie  moon  sacrifices. 
This  is  called  in  Bengali  Gum-bar,  and  Gum-adi  in  Tamil, 
or  the  tree  of  the  Gumi  or  house-pole :  it  grows  on  the 
mountains,  and  will  never  rot  in  water.*  This  enclosing 
triangle  is  said  to  represent  the  three  former  supreme  gods, 
or  the  mother  gods  of  the  three  races  wlio  preceded  tliat 
which  made  Agni,  the  fire-god,  tlieir  supreme  god.  They 
are  said  to  be  placed  round  him  to  protect  him  from  the 
thunderbolt  of  Indra,  the  rain-god,  symbolised  by  the  Vashat 
call  or  summons  to  the  sacrifice  addressed  by  the  Hotar,  or 
pourer  of  libations  (Aw),  to  the  old  gods  after  the  ydjyds^  or 
offering  prayers,  and  just  before  the  offerings  are  poured  on 
the  fire.*  The  ritual  here  depicted  is  that  of  a  sacrifice  to  the 
rain-god  to  secure  good  rains,  and  tlie  Vashat  call  is  really, 
as  it  is  said  to  be  in  the  Brahmanas,  the  Varshat,  or  rain 
prayer  of  the  people,  who  called  the  Soma  plant  Varsha-blm, 
or  bom  of  the  rain  (varsha)?  After  the  enclosing  sticks 
have  l)een  laid  round  the  fire  the  next  process  is  to  kindle 
it.     In  doing  this,  the  Adhvaryu  places  on  the  altar  the 

^  Eggeling,  ScU.  Brah.  i.  3,  3,  20;  S.B.E.  pp.  89,  90. 
-  Risley,   Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.    p.  327 ;    Eggeling,  Sai. 
Brah,  i.  7,  I,  I  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  183. 

'  E^eling,  Sat,  Brdh.  iii.  4,  i,  16;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  89. 

*  Clarke's  Roxburgh's  Flora  Indica^  p.  486. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  i.  5,  I,  16;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  135  note  i. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  i.  5,  2,  18;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  \\  143.  Professor 
Eggeling  calls  this  derivation  fanciful,  p.  143  note  2,  and  in  p.  88  note  2, 
he  derives  it  from  Vah^  to  carry  up,  and  explains  it  as  a  call  to  Agni  to  carry 
up  the  libations  to  the  gods.  This  is  doubtless  an  etymolc^y  which  is  scienti- 
fically exact  for  the  word  Vashat,  which  is  that  substituted  by  the  later 
ritualistic  reformers  for  the  original  Varshati.  It  is  this  latter  word  which  is 
clearly  required  to  fit  in  with  the  ritual,  which  is,  as  I  have  shown  clearly, 
that  of  a  sacrifice  to  the  rain-god. 


166  THE' RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

lowest  of  the  two  kindling  sticks,  toucliing  with  it  as  he 
does  so  the  Western  enclosing  stick.  This  kindling  stick 
is  called  Ur-vashl,  the  ancient  (ur)  fashioner  (vcufhi\  tlie 
mother  of  the  sacred  fire.  This  is  made  of  Khadira  wood 
(Acacia  catechu),  taken  from  the  sacrificial  stake,  to  which 
the  slain  victim  is  bound.^  He  says,  '  Thou  art  the  birth- 
place of  Agni,"*  and  lays  on  it,  with  their  tops  to  the  East, 
two  stalks  of  Kusha  grass,  which  are  called  Vrishanau,  or 
the  organs  of  generation.*  The  upper  stick,  which  is  first 
called  Ayu,  the  son  of  Ur-vashI,  he  first  dips  in  ffkee,  or 
clarified  butter,  and  then  kindles  the  sacred  fire  by  twirling 
it  round,  as  if  churning,  in  the  lower  kindling  stick,  by  a 
string  twisted  round  the  cross-bar  placed  on  its  top,  calling 
it  as  he  does  so  Puru-ravas,  the  Eastern  Thunderer,  or  roar- 
ing god  {ravas\  who  was  the  hasband  of  Ur-vashi.^  The 
Adhvaryu  then  lays  on  the  altar  two  stalks  of  Kusha  grass, 
called  vidhritiSy  with  their  tops  to  the  North,  and  places  the 
prastara  on  them  ;  but  in  the  Soma  sacrifice  the  vidhritis 
are  made  of  sugar-cane,  and  the  prastara  not  of  the  succulent 
and  nourishing  Kusha  or  Durba  grass  (Poa  cynosuroides),  but 
of  the  Ashva  vala  (Sacchantm  spontaneuvi),  or  horse-tail 
grass,  called  in  tlie  vernacular  Kasha.  It  is  a  tall,  reed-like 
grass,  sprouting  when  the  rains  first  fall,  and  lias  round 
its  flowers  a  circle  of  white  silvery  liairs,  which  fall  down 
below  them  like  snowy  horse-tails.*  Therefore  it  is  a  fitting 
emblem  of  the  sons  of  the  horse,  who  came  down  from 
the  snowy  North  and  made  their  guiding  stars  the  Ashvins, 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  iii.  4,  i,  19-22  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  90  note  5, 
and  91. 

'•*  Ibid.  iii.  4,  2,  21  ;  i.  3,  4,  10;  ii.  5,  419;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  90; 
vol.  xii.  pp.  92,  389  note  3. 

^  Ibid.  ii.  5,  I,  19;  iii.  4,  I,  20-22,  voL  xii.  p.  389  note  i  ;  vol.  xxvi. 
pp.  90  note  5,  and  91 ;  also  see  vol.  xii.  p.  294  note  3.  The  fire  was  pro- 
duced by  a  process  like  churning.  The  Arani,  or  fire-drill,  made  of  Ashvattha 
{Ficiis  religiosa)  wood,  being  twirled  repeatedly  round,  till  the  fire  is  lighted, 
by  a  string  fixed  in  a  cross-bar  at  its  top.  Tliere  arc  two  specimens  of  the 
orthodox  fire-drill  and  sockets  in  the  Pitt  Rivers'  Museum  at  Oxford. 

**  Ibid,  iii.  4,  i,  17,  18  ;  vol.  xxvi.  p.  89  note  3. 


ESSAY  111  167 

or  heavenly  horsemen  (Ashva\  the  twin  stars  of  Gemini,  wlio 
are  called  the  Adhvaryu,  or  ceremonial  priests  and  physicians 
of  the  gods,  and  tlie  leaders  of  the  Soma  sacrifice.^  It  was 
these  Ashvins  also  who  made  the  Khadira  tree  a  sacred  tree, 
for  it  yields  not  only  the  red  catechu  dye,  which  replaced 
the  blood  used  to  vitalise  the  altars ;  but  also  the  catechu 
extract,  a  most  valuable  medicinal  drug.  Similarly  the  two 
vidhriti^  of  sugar-cane  mark  the  race  of  the  Iskshvaku,  or 
sons  of  the  sugar-cane  {Iksha\  as  one  of  the  races  whicli 
founded  the  Soma  sacrifice. 

While  the  fire  is  being  kindled,  the  Hotar  recites  the 

eleven  kindling  verses,  a  number  which  I  shall  show  to  be 

sacred  to  the  Ashvins,  and  the  Adhvaryu  pours  silently  a 

libation  of  ghee  to  Praja-pati,  the  lord  (pati)  of  former  {pra) 

generations  (ja),  marking  by  it  a  line  from  the  north-west 

to  the  south-east  of  the  fire-triangle,  and  when  the  Hotar 

proceeds  to  invite  the  older  gods,  the  Adhvaryu  moves  from 

the  north  to  the  south  side  of  the  altar,  and  marks  with 

another  libation  of  ghee  a  second  line  in  the  triangle  from 

the  south-west  to  the  nortli-east,  crossing  the  first,  and  thus 

the  sacrificer  dedicates  to  Indra,  the  speaking  or  thundering 

god,  saying,  '  Om  !  for  Indra  this,  not  for  me,**  showing  that 

the  rain-god  comes  from  the  south-west  with  the  south-west 

monsoon,  which  brings  the  rains.     The  Adlivaryu  then  lays 

on  these  lines  the  lower  kindling  stick  from  north-west  to 

south-east,  and  places  across  it  the  fire-drill  from  south-west 

to  north-east.^     He  thus  makes  the  triangle  a  picture  of  the 

mother-land  of  Northern  India,  stretching  from  tlie  Panjab 

in  the  north-west  to  Bengal  in  tlie  south-east,  macle  pregnant 

by  the  rains  coming  from  the  south-west.     By  this  series  of 

ceremonies  the  altar  is  completed,  and  its  figure  is  as  shown 

in  the  accompanying  diagram. 

*  Eggcling,  Sa/,  Brah,  i.   I,  2,  17 ;  iv.  i,  5,  8  and  15;  S.B.E.   vol.  xii. 
p.  16 ;  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  274,  276. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  i.   3,  4,  5  ;  i.   4,  4.  2-7  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  91 
note  I,  124  note  I,  and  128  note  2. 


168  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


South 


A,  the  western  Paridhi ;  B,  the  southern,  sacred  to  Indra, 

the  rain-god  ;  C,  the  northern,  sacred  to  Mitra  Varuna. 

D.  E.   The    line 
North 


from  north-west  to 
south-east,  on  which 
the  mother  Urvashi 
is  placed,  who  is 
shown  in  the  Pre- 
face to  be  the  mother 
goddess  of  the  year 
of  three  seasons. 
F.G.  The  line  from  south-west  to  north-east,  by  which  the 
rain  and  father-god  comes. 

H  I,  the  two  vrishanau  of  Kusha  grass,  symbolising  the 
passage  of  the  people  who  consecrated  the  altar  from  west 
to  east. 

This  elaborate  ceremonial  tells  us  that  the  fathers  and 
mothers  of  the  race  who  framed  the  ritual  entered  India  from 
the  north-west,  and  settled  in  the  land  watered  by  the  rains  of 
the  south-west  monsoon,  for  the  western  enclosing  stick  (A)  is 
the  first  that  is  laid  down,  and  it  is  this  which  is  first  touched 
by  Urv^ashi,  the  fire-mother  of  the  race,  before  it  is  placed 
on  the  altar,  while  it  is  the  Northern  stick  which  is  placed  last. 
This  represents  the  race  which  subsequently  joined  the 
Western  immigrants,  and  who  worshipped  the  gods  of  heaven, 
Mitra  the  moon-god,  and  Varuna  the  god  of  the  raining  (var) 
heaven,  and  also  of  the  dark  nights.  The  whole  tells  us  how 
the  worshippers  of  the  fire-god,  whom  I  shall  show  to  be  the 
Maghadas,  entered  India  from  the  north-west,  prospered 
there,  cultivated  the  country,  and  reckoned  the  lapse  of  time 
by  the  inter\'al  between  one  rainy  season  and  another,  and 
how  they  were  joined  afterwards  by  the  Northern  race,  who 
completed  the  figure  of  the  tortoise-earth,  and  called  themselves 
the  Kushikas,  or  sons  of  Kush,  the  tortoise,  and  reckoned  time 
by  the  phases  of  the  moon  (mitra)  and  by  the  stars  of  Varuna. 
But  the  people  whom  these  two  immigrant  races  replaced  were 


ESSAY  III  169 

those  who  worshipped  the  older  trinity  of  the  three  mother 
seasons  represented  hy  the  triangle  ;  and  the  history  of  the 
religious  revolution  which  replaced  the  worsliip  of  the  three 
older  gods  by  that  of  the  thunder-god,  who  impregnated 
the  rain  by  the  heavenly  fire,  the  liglitning  flash,  is  told  in  the 
£rahmanas  in  the  story  of  the  consecration  of  Nabha-nedishtha. 
The  name  means  that  which  is  nearest  (nedishthd)  to  the  navel 
{ndbhd).  He  complained  to  his  father  Manu  (the  thinker), 
called  Praja-pati  in  the  lligveda,  that  his  brethren  the 
Angiras,  the  offerers  of  burnt  oiFerings  {afiga)  had  deprived 
him  of  his  inheritance.  His  father  said  that  the  Angiras, 
the  priests  of  the  earthly  deities,  wanted,  but  did  not  know 
how,  to  get  to  heaven.  If  he  told  them  that  they  could 
attain  their  wish  by  reciting  the  two  hynms  Rigevda,  x.  61, 
62,  they  would  on  their  departure  give  him  his  inheritance, 
that  is,  allow  him  to  be  the  supreme-god  iiLstead  of  their 
gods.  Of  these  hymns,  Rigveda  x.  61  tells  us  how  Nabha- 
nedishtha  was  born  from  the  union  of  Prajapati  witli  his 
daughter,  the  earth,  and  how  on  l)is  birth  he  claimed  to  be 
supreme  god,  saying  (v.  18,  19),  '  This  our  navel  is  the 
highest.  I  am  his  son.  Here  is  my  liome.  These  gods  (the 
old  gods)  are  mine.  I  am  the  first  twice  bom  son  of  the  law  ** 
(of  nature).  Hymn  62  is  addiessed  to  the  Angiras,  and  calls 
on  them  in  the  refrain  of  the  first  four  stanzas  '  to  receive  the 
son  of  Manu,**  here  called  Narasliaihsa.  Narashamsa  is  the 
Zend  Nairyo  Sangha,^  called  the  Yazad  of  royal  lineage,  who 
guards  the  seed  of  Zarathustra,  and  intrusts  it  to  the  care  of 
the  goddess  of  the  ever-flowing,  undefiled  spring  of  water,  the 
stream  of  time,  Ardvl  Sura  Anahita,  who  is  to  l)etlie  mother 
of  his  sons  Hushedar,  Husliedar-Mali,  and  Soshyans,  the 
prophets  of  the  future.^  Narfisliaihsa  is  the  never-dying  heat 
which  makes  tlie  life-giving  water  pregnant,  and  is  thus  the 

1  Haug,*yl//.  Brdh.  v.  2,  14  ;  vol.  ii.  pp.  341,  342;  Tait,  Samh,  iii.  I,  9, 
4,  6.     Rigveda^  x.  61,  62,  Ludwig*s  Translation. 

-  Mill,  Yasnas^  xvii.  ii  ;  West,  Bundahish,  xxxii.  8;  S.B.E,  vol.  xxxi. 
p.  258,  vol ;  V.  p.  144. 


170  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

father  <»f  all  life,  called  in  the  Sirozahs  '  the  god  Naityo 
Sangiui  who  dwells  in  the  navel  of  kings,'  ^  who  is  also  called 
'  the  messenger  of  the  gods.'  *  The  fire  and  lightriing-god 
who  came  to  earth  as  the  miraculously  bom  sacrificial  flanie 
Nabhii-nedishtha  was,  we  are  told  in  the  Aitareya  Brahmana, 
the  successor  of  Rudra  the  red  (rud)  god  of  the  sacrificial 
stake,  reddened  with  the  blood  of  his  victims,  who  was  the 
father  of  the  Maruts,  tlie  wjnd -goddesses.^  Rudra  claimed 
the  ])lace  allotted  by  the  Aflgiras  to  Nubhu-nedishtha,  but 
gave  up  his  claim  when  the  latter  allowed  that  Rudra  used  to 
rule  the  sacrifice. 

Tliis  story  tells  us  that  a  race  who  made  the  Maruts  or 
wind-gcxldesses  their  gods,  placed  in  tlie 
centre  of  their  sacrificial  altars,  the  place 
formerly  occupied  by  Rudra,  the  sacrificial 
stake,  the  fire  iwrn  of  the  fire-mother, 
Ur-vashi,  the  wood  taken  from  the  sacri- 
ficial stake.  The  central  altar-fire  was 
the  god  called  Agni  jatavedas,  or  Agni, 
who  knows  (vedas)  the  secret  of  birth 
( jata),  whom  the  Hotar  at  the  fire-sacrificv 
a<1dresses  in  the  words  of  lligveda,  iii.  29, 
i :  '  We  place  thee,  O  Jatavetlas,  in  the 
place  of  Ida  (the  mountain-daughter  of 
Matiu)  in  the  navel  (nabha)  of  tlie  altar, 
to  carry  our  offerings,'  Hence  the  Western 
race,  whose  father-god  was  Agni,  was 
one  whose  mother-goddess  was  Ida,  the 
daughter  and  wife  of  Manu,  as  Nabha- 
nedishtha  was  his  son.  The  central  fire, 
which  in  their  eyes  vitalised  the  altar,  formerly  reddened  by 
blood,  became  in  Greek  mythology  the  fire-god  Herakles, 
married   to  Omphale,  the  navel.      This  god   of  the  navel. 


Daimcst. 

;ter,  Zeiuiaztsta  Sirozah,  i 

i.  9;  S.B.E.  vol.  ^ 

DarmesH 

;ler,  VendiJad  Fargard,  :i 

xii.  7!  S.B.E.  vol. 

Kigvedi, 

.  ii.  33.  '- 

ESSAY  III  171 

the  son  of  the  primaeval  mother,  was  in  Greece  the  god' 
Pytho,  the  dweller  in  Delphi,  the  womb  or  holy  shrine 
of  the  Grecian  race,  who  was  the  son  of  the  abyss  (fiv06^\ 
from  whence  his  name  is  derived.  This  was  the  fhom  of 
Genesis,  the  dark  void  in  which  the  Spirit  of  God  moved  on 
the  face  of  the  waters,  and  went  up  in  a  mist  which  watered 
the  face  of  the  ground,^  and  made  it  capable  of  bearing 
living  things.  But  it  is  not  only  echoes  of  this  Indian  myth, 
but  also  the  ritual  which  explained  and  preserved  it,  which 
is  found  in  Greece.  It  appears  in  the  image  of  Apollo 
Aguieus,  which  was  a  triangular  block  of  stone,  and  still 
more  conspicuously  in  the  sketch  on  page  170  of  the  leaden 
figure  of  the  goddess  of  the  earth-altar,  found  by  Dr. 
Schliemann  in  the  second  city  from  the  bottom  of  the  six 
cities,  built  one  over  another,  on  the  site  of  Troy.  This 
exactly  depicts  the  Hindu  altar,  made  in  the  form  of  a 
woman,  with  the  Svastika  or  holy  fire,  ^  the  sun  of  the 
revolving  year  in  the  centre  of  the  triangle.  Its  great 
antiquity  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the  city  in  which  it 
was  found  was  one  built  near  the  beginning  of  the  Bronze 
Age,  as  all  tlie  weapons  and  instruments  in  tliat  below  it, 
except  a  few  bronze  knife-blades  and  hair-pins,  are  all  of 
stone.2  The  myth  and  ritual  appear  also  in  the  universal 
worship  throughout  South-western  Asia  of  the  triangle  as 
the  sign  of  the  Supreme  God,  which  I  have  described  in  the 
Preface ;  in  tlie  triangular  altar  of  the  Stone  Age,  depicted 
on  the  Babylonian  Uranographic  stone,  as  the  altar  of  Nebo, 
or  Nabu,  the  prophet-god,  and  the  planet  Mercury ;  in  the 
Hittite  sign  for  Istar,  which  is  a  triangle,  as  shown  in  the 
symbol  on  p.  172  depicted  in  the  Hittite  Hamath  inscrip- 
.^  tion,  representing  the  moon  cow-fish  above  the  triangle 
Istar  ;^    and    in    the   sign  for   woman,   used    both    in   the 

'  Gen.  i.  2  ;  ii.  6. 

'  Schuchardt*s  Schliemann*s  Excavations^  fig.  6o,  p,  67  ;  also  pp.  37,  38. 
'  This  information  is  taken  from  an  address  on  *  The  Nature  of  Hitiitc 
Writings,'  delivered  before  the  Oriental  Congress  of  1892,  by  Mr.  T.  Tylor.— 


/■ 


in  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

inscriptions  of  Gir-su  {Telloh\^  and  by  the  ancient  Chinese. 
This    triangle    r^>    repeats   not   only   the    sign    on    the 

altar,  but  also  tlie  line  drawn    from    west   to  east   by  the 

two  stalks  of  Kusha  grass,  and  this 
agreement  marks  it  as  connected  with  the 
Kushite  or  tortoise  myth,  and  as  a  symbol 
of  a  race  descended  from  a  divine  mother. 
The  ideograms  of  the  Assyrian  Nebo  or 
Nabu,  the  prophet-god,  and  his  Akkadian 
form  Nuz-ku,  who  was  the  messenger 
who  tells  la  of  the  waning  of  the 
moon,^  give  us  further  evidence  of  the 
order  of  development  of  these  ideas.  That  of  Nuz-ku  jifz  ]^ 
means  the  sceptre,  or  dawn,  ^jfp.  and  ]^  seat  or  prince,^ 
or  the  sceptre  of  tlie  prince  of  the  dawn,  that  is,  the  king 
of  the  East,  whence  the  rain  and  morning  light  come,  while 
the  Akkadian  equivalents  of  the  two  ideograms  of  the 
Assyrian  Nabu,  are  Sak  and  Suk,  meaning  the  wet-god.* 
We  thus  see  that  it  was  the  East,  the  home  of  the  rain-god 
and  tlie  morning  dawn  which  was  made  tlie  mother  of  a  new 
race  by  the  coming  from  the  West  of  the  fire-god,  the  god  of 
the  life-gi\ing  lightning-flash.  The  Eastern  meeting-place  of 
the  tliree  races  from  the  south,  north,  and  west,  was  the 
mother-mountain  or  the  Ida,  called  the  centre  of  the  sacri- 
fice, and  wlio  is  also  the  mother-tree  ;  and  it  is  Ida,  Main,  or 
Bharati,  and  Sarasvatl,  who  are  the  three  mothers  invoked 
in  the  eiglith  stanzas  of  the  sacrificial  Apri  hymns  in  the 
Rigveda,  recited  at  the  animal  sacrifices.  Tliese  three  fomi 
the  mother-triangle,  and  in  the  Apri  liymn    (Rigieda,  iii. 

Transactions  of  the  Ninth  International  Congress  of  Orientalists^  vol.  ii. 
Semitic  Section,  p.  260. 

^  Amiaud  et  Mechinseau,  lableaii  Comparic  des  Ecritnres  Babyloniennes  et 
Assyrienues^  No.  163,  p.  65. 

^  Lenormant,  ChalJaan  Magic ^  p.  206. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  236,  222,  462. 

*  Ibid.  Nos.  231,  347. 


ESSAY  III  173 

4,  8),  Bharati  is  summoned  to  the  sacrifice  with  her  sons, 
Ila  and  Agni,  with  men,  and  Sarasvati  with  her  sons,  who 
traced  their  descent  to  the  rivers,  bom  from  the  mother- 
mountain.  Thus  Bharati  is  the  mother  of  the  matriarchal 
village  races.  Ida  or  Ila,  of  the  fire-worshippers,  and  Saras- 
vati of  the  immigrant  agriculturists  from  the  North,  who, 
quitting  the  lower  hills  on  which  the  earlier  farmers  had 
tilled  their  crops,  descended  into  the  river  valleys,  learned  to 
control  the  floods,  and  to  store  for  irrigation  the  water  which 
had  been  thought  to  be  invincible  by  their  predecessors.  It 
is  their  successes  which  are  recorded  in  the  myths  telling  us 
of  the  conquest  of  the  river  gods.  As  for  Ida  or  Ila,  she 
appears  in  the  myth  of  Manu's  flood  as  the  purified  goddess, 
the  mother  of  cattle,  generated  at  the  close  of  a  year  out  of 
the  life-giving  waters  by  the  heavenly  seed  of  clarified  butter 
{ghee)y  sour  milk,  curds,  and  whey,  whicli  Manu  threw  into 
the  waters.^  But  the  name  Ida,  as  is  shown  by  the  cerebral 
d,  is  not  a  primitive  Aryan  word,  but  one  of  which  tlie  origin 
must  be  looked  for  in  Dravidian  roots.  The  Tamil  form  of 
the  word  is  Eda^  a  sheep,  and  this  word  appears  in  Sanskrit  as 
the  Eda  or  Edaka^  the  ewe  and  ram  sacred  to  Varuna,  the 
god  of  the  rain  {var\  and  called  in  tlie  ritual  of  the  Varuna 
Praghasah,  or  summer  festival,  Varunals  victini,^  and  in 
Egyptian  theology  we  find  the  transition  from  the  ewe-  to 
the  cow-mother,  and  from  the  ram-  to  the  bull-father,  ex- 
plained in  the  Hibis  hymn,  which  makes  Osiris  the  goat-ram- 
god  of  Mendes,  called  the  fruitful  ram  of  tribes,  tlie  fatlier 
of  the  son  of  the  moon-cow  Isis.^  It  is  as  the  slieep-mother 
that  Ida  supplies  the  woollen  sieve  through  which  the  Soma 
is  strained,  called,  among  other  names,  Anvani  Meshyah,  the 
sieve  of  the  ram,  in  which  the  Tamil  word  mesham^  a  goat, 
is  reproduced,  but  made  to  mean  not  the  goat,  but  his  suc- 

^  Eggeling,  ScU,  Brdh,  i.  8  ;  i.  7,  20 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  2i8,  223. 
^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Bdahy  ii.  5,  2,  15,  16;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  395. 
*  U.  Brugsch,  /Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  /Egypter,  p.  309. 


174  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

cesser,  the  ram.^  It  was  thus  as  tlie  lieavenly  sieve  that  she 
l)ecaine  the  mother-goddess  of  the  rains,  the  plural  Idah,  the 
Apsara,  or  cloud-mothers,  the  mother  of  the  races  who  are 
the  sons  of  the  goat,  the  sheep,  and  the  cow.  This  is  the 
central  sacrifice  to  the  seasons  in  the  New  and  Full-Moon 
sacrifice,  where  the  sacrifices  are  oiFered  in  the  following 
order :  (1)  to  the  Samidhs  or  kindling  sticks,  the  spring, 
the  mother  Ur-vashi;  (2)  to  the  Tanunapat,  the  self- 
created,  the  wind-god,  the  god  of  the  burning  west  winds  of 
summer ;  (3)  to  the  Idah,  or  rains  ;  (4)  to  the  Barhis,  the 
sacrificial  grass  of  the  sons  of  Kush,  the  autunm ;  and  (5)  to 
Rudra  or  Agni  Snshtakrit,  the  most  hallowed  {svishta)^ 
Agni,  the  winter-god,  the  god  to  whom  animal  victims  were 
offered.^  These  gotls  who  accepted  living  victims  are  Agni- 
Soma,  Agni-Somau,  Indr-Agni,  Ashvinau,  Vanas-pati,  Deva- 
Ajyapa,  or  the  gods  of  the  age  of  twin-gods,  which  I  shall 
j)resently  describe ;  the  gods  to  whom  the  life-inspiring  fire, 
Agni-Soma;  the  life-giving  water  and  fire,  Agni-Somau  ;  the 
rain  and  fire-gods,  Indr-Agni ;  the  twin-stars  of  Gemini ;  the 
sacrificial  stake,  Vanaspati,  or  lord  (pati)  of  the  forest 
{vanu) ;  and  the  goat  (rtyi)-father,  Ashvinau  Deva  Ajyapa, 
are  sacred.^ 

The  course  of  the  process  which  changed  the  goat  to  the 
ram-  and  bull-father,  and  the  sheep  to  the  cow-mother,  is 
also  marked  by  the  early  marriage  customs  which,  as  might 
be  expected  when  the  persons  united  belonged  to  the  alien 
races  of  the  matriaR»hal  Southern  women  and  the  patriarchal 
Northern  men,  show  most  distinct  signs  of  the  fusion  of 
inimical  tribes.  First,  there  are  everywhere  traces  of 
marriage  by  capture,  but  the  chief  sign  that  the  marriage 
was  the  conclusion  of  peace  between  two  hostile  races  is  to 
l)e  found  in  the  custom  of  blood  infusion,  or  the  making 
of  blood-brotherhood,   which   is   actually  practised  in   the 

'  Rij^veda,  ix.  86,  47  ;  I  lillcbrandt,  Vcdischc  Mythologies  p.  203. 
'  Eggeling,  Sat  B rah. ^  i.  5,  3,  9-13  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  146,  148. 
'  Haug,  Aitareya  Brahmana^  vol.  ii.  pp.  95,  96  note. 


ESSAY  III  175 

Khewut  Kurmi  and  Birhor  marriages,^  and  whidi  is  the 
origin  of  the  custom  of  sindurdan^  or  marking  the  parting 
of  the  bride'*8  hair  with  vermilion,  the  binding  ceremony  in 
all  orthodox  Hindu  marriages,  from  that  of  the  Brahmins 
downwards,  except  some  of  those  in  which  the  hands  of  the 
wedded  pair  are  bound  together  with  Kusha  grass,*  for  these 
having  been  already  united  as  sons  of  the  tortoise,  require  no 
fresh  introduction  into  the  tribe  in  which  thev  are  married. 
This  union  of  alien  races  in  marriage  is  also  denoted  by 
the  custom  observed  in  Russian  Esthonian  and  ancient 
Roman  marriages  of  placing  the  bride  on  a  sheep'^s  skin. 
But  when  this  custom  filtered  down  into  India  the  sheep- 
mother  had  become  the  bull-father,  and  hence  in  the  mar- 
riages of  the  Grihya  Sutras,  the  bride,  on  entering  her 
husband'^s  house,  is  always  placed  on  a  red  buIFs  hide  as  a 
sign  that  she  was  received  into  the  tribe  and  family  ^  of  her 
husband,  descended  from  Rohini,  the  red  cow.  It  is  this 
custom  of  placing  the  bride  on  a  bull's  hide  which  appears  in 
the  Soma  sacrifice,  when  the  pressing-stones,  the  womb  whence 
the  god  Soma  is  to  be  born,  are  placed  on  a  bull'*s  hide/ 

But  in  order  to  understand  clearly  how  the  sheep-mother, 
Ida,  became  the  mother  of  Agni,  the  fire-god,  as  she  is  called 
in  the  Apri  hymns,  we  must  go  to  the  original  birthplace 
of  the  fire-myths,  the  land  of  Phrygia,  the  mountain  countries 
of  the  Caucasus  range,  and  the  snowy  heights  whence  the 
Euphrates,  the  mother-river  of  the  Shus,  rises.  It  was 
there  that  the  earliest  shepherd  races,  the  sons  of  the  fire- 
god,  and  of  Yima,  the  father  shepherd  of  Zend  theology,  met 
the  matriarchal  races,  the  immigrants  from  the  South-east, 

*  Risley,  Trides  and  Castes  of  Bengal ,  vol.  i.  pp.  138,  456,  532. 

*  These  are  the  Bhandaris,  Chasas,  Khandaiis,  Kochh,  Savars  or  Souris. 

*  Oldenberg,  Grihya  Sutra  Sdnkhdyana  Grihya  Sutra/i.  16,  l.Asvaldyana, 
i.  8,  9.  Godhita,  ii.  3,  3;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxix.  pp.  41,  171;  xxx.  p.  47  ; 
Winternilz,  'Indo-European  Marriage  Customs,'  Papers  of  International 
Folk  Lore  Congress^  1891,  pp.  273,  274. 

*  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythologies  pp.   181,  183;  Rigveda,  ix.  79,  4,  x. 

94,9. 


176  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  Hindu  village  conini unities,  wlio  are  called  by  the  Greeks 
tlie  Amazons,  and  are  described  as  the  earliest  ruling  races  of 
Asia  Minor  and  Greece.  They  are  the  Cananites  or  dwellers 
in  the  low  country,  and  the  Hivites  or  the  villagers  of  the 
Bible,  and  the  race  of  the  Acha^ans  of  Greece.  These  are  the 
sons  of  e;^*?,  the  serpent,  the  having  or  holding  (e;^©,  to  have) 
snake,  the  girdling  snake  of  cultivated  land  which  surrounded 
the  Temenos  or  inner  shrine,  the  holy  grove  of  the  gods.  It 
was  these  people  who  had  brought  from  India  their  village 
institutions,  their  holy  groves,  and  seasonal  dances.  The 
Satyrs,  or  mountain  shepherds,  whom  they  met  in  the  valleys 
of  the  Phrygian  Ida,  were  the  people  who  called  themselves 
the  sons  of  the  mountain-goat,  and  worshipped  the  goat-god 
Pan.  It  was  among  these  people  that  the  Fmnic  mining 
races,  the  inventors  of  the  wonder-working  fire,  descended. 
They  were  the  race  called  Briges  or  Bruges  in  Thrace,  and 
who  also  gave  their  name  to  Phrygia.^  They  are  the 
Phlegyes  of  the  Greeks,  whose  father-god  the  Cyclops,  the 
one-eyed  fire-god,  was  slain  by  the  Branchian  Apollo,  called 
Hekebolos,  tlie  fire-darter,  the  roaring  god  of  storms,-  the 
Apollo  of  Mysia  and  the  /Eolian  race,  and  tlie  father-god  of 
Troy.  It  was  in  Phrygia  that  they  were  mixed  with  the 
Daktuloi,  or  race  of  handicraftsmen  and  artificers,  the  sons 
of  the  god  Dak,^  the  showing  or  teaching  god,  the  Hindu 
god  Daksha,  father  of  the  wives  of  Kashyapa,  the  father  of 
the  tortoise  (Kiish)  race.  They  were  the  carpenters  and 
builders  of  the  Stone  Age,  and,  therefore,  the  measuring  rac4?, 
and  hence  their  name  of  Mygdones,  the  men  of  the  club,  the 
Hindu  Mugda,  the  measuring  rod,  the  magic  wand,  the 
original  praMara^  and  it  was  their  union  with  sons  of  fire 
that  made  the  father  of  the  united  races  to  be  Akmon,  the 

^  MUller,  Die  Dorter^  Preface  (Einleitung),  §§  6  and  7,  pp.  7,  8  and  10 
note  2. 

-  /bid,  book  ii.,  chap,  vii,  §  8,  p,  323  ;  Branchian  is  from  ^pbrfxpi^  the 
throat,  and  means  the  roaring-god. 

'  The  root  appears  in  bdKWiu,  to  show,  and  the  Latin  doceo^  to  teach. 


ESSAY  III  177 

anvil.  They  were  the  great  building  race  of  the  Stone  Age, 
who  called  themselves  Iberians  or  Eber,  and  their  congeners, 
the  Iberian  Basques,  still  call  their  knives  asztoa,  or  the  little 
stone,  their  axes  aitzkora^  or  a  stone  (aiiza)  lifted  up  (ffoj-a^ 
high),  a  pick -axe,  aitz-urra^  or  the  stone  which  tears  {una). 
It  is  also  these  people  who  call  copper  urraida,  the  Akkadian 
uritd;  but  this  name,  which  in  its  ideogram  means  the  seed 
metaV  was  not  the  original  name  given  to  it  by  the  Finns, 
the  first  workers  in  metal,  which  was  Vaski.*  The  root  of 
this  name  appears  in  tlie  Greek  Feaap^  spring,  and  in  the 
Hindu  spring-god  Vasuki,  wlio,  as  I  shall  show,  was  a 
foreign  importation  who  replaced  the  old  Gond  god  Sek-Nag, 
the  Shesh-Nag  of  the  Mahabhurata ;  Shesh-Nag  being  placed 
in  the  lower  regions  of  the  eartli  to  support  the  tortoise^ 
while  Vasuki  churned  the  amrita^  or  waters  of  immortality^ 
from  the  ocean,  by  twisting  the  rope  wound  round  Mount 
Mandara,  and  it  was  this  god  Vas-ki  who  was  tlie  god  of  the 
Basques  or  Vasks,  the  first  workers  in  metal,  and  the  first 
farming  races  in  Europe.  It  was  he  who  made  the  seasons 
by  which  tliey  regulated  the  cultivation  of  their  crops. 
These  early  builders  built  the  huts  witli  the  pole  {gumi)  in 
the  centre,  and  these  reproduced  the  beeliive  huts  of  Phrygia, 
excavated  in  the  hill-sides,  and  roofed  over  by  rafters  cover- 
ing it  in  a  conical  form.^  They  were  the  sons  of  tlie  father^ 
pole,  the  supporters  of  the  house.  They  were  also  the 
Neolithic  farmers  of  tlie  ancient  world,  whose  remains,  found 
in  places  so  widely  separated  from  each  other  as  the  caves  of 
Wales  and  Yorkshire  and  the  Neolithic  villages  of  Switzer- 
land and  Italy,  prove  that  they  kept  horses,  short-honied 

^  The  sign  for  urud  ^ST  reproduces  that  for/«  (the  marsh)  ^  with  the 
addition  of  the  two  initial  signs  of  the  tree  ^f  and  ^  is  a  variant  form  of 
"y^  =the  sign  for  the  god  Dav-kina  or  Shus,  the  snake-mother  of  Dumu-zi. 
Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  177,  221,  223,  321,  470. 

'  Schrader,  Prehistoric  Antiquities  of  the  Aryan  Peoples^  translated  by 
Jevons,  Part  iii.  chap.  vi.  p.  187. 

'  Schuchhardt*s  Schliemann's  Excavations^  p.  151. 

12 


f 


178  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

oxen,  liorned  sheep,  goats,  and  pigs ;  and  grew  wheat,  barley, 
millets,  peas,  flax,  fruit-trees,  and  vines  from  stocks  which 
must  first  have  been  grown  in  Southern  Europe  and  Asia 
Minor,  for  the  vine  is  an  indigenous  plant  in  Armenia,  and 
barley  was  raised  from  a  grass  prototype  in  the  country 
between  North  Palestine  and  Lydia,  the  home  of  the  sons  of 
Yima,  the  heavenly  twins,  who,  as  I  shall  show,  were  the  first 
growers  of  barley ;  and  barley  is  a  Basque  grain,  for  Mr. 
Crawfurd  tells  us  that  the  names  for  wheat,  barley,  and  oats 
are  purely  Basque.^  They  were  also  the  first  spinners, 
weavers,  and  makers  of  pottery,  and  built  canoes,  and  worked 
in  mines.^  These  men  covered  the  whole  of  Europe  and 
Southern  Asia,  especially  the  lands  of  Bashan  and  Moab  to 
the  east  of  the  Jordan,  and  the  Indian  Dekhan,  with  crom- 
lechs, or  stone  circles,  which  were  certainly  in  some  cases 
roofed  over,  dolmens,  meaning  stone  tables,  slirines,  and 
altars,  tumuli  and  memorial  stones  or  pillars,  and  all  of 
these,  whether  found  in  Western  Europe  or  Southern  Asia, 
are  completely  identical  in  their  character.^  These  people 
had  in  their  migrations  established  an  active  and  wide- 
spread foreign  trade,  for  it  is  only  by  this  means  that  we  can 
explain  the  presence  in  the  Neolitliic  tomb  of  Carnac  in 
Brittany  of  eleven  beautiful  jade  axes,  the  number  sacred, 
as  I  shall  show,  to  the  twin  races,  made  of  jade  brought 
from  Turkistan  in  Western  China.^  Their  name  Eber  has, 
like  other  ancient  racial  names,  assumed  various  forms,  such 
as  those  of  the  eldest  son  of  the  old  Erse  father-god.  Mil. 
He  appears  as   Emer,   Eber,   Ira,   lar,  and  Ir,   and   it   is 

^  Crawfurd,  Plants  in  reference  to  Ethnology;  Trans:  Eth.  Sor.  vol.  v.; 
Buckland,  Anthropological  Studies,  p.  85.     See  also  Preface. 

2  Boyd  Dawkins,  Early  Man  of  Britain^  pp.  266,  268,  293,  298,  300,-302. 
Also  an  Article  by  the  same  author,  Fortnightly  Review,  Oct.  1892  ;  *  The 
Settlement  of  Wales ; '  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  2nd  Edition,  chap.  vi. 
pp.  166-214  f  Von  Bradke,  Uber  Methode  tmd Ergebnisse  dcr  Arischen  Alter- 
thums  Wissenschaft,  Part  ii.  pp.  276,  280. 

^  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  2nd  Edition,  chap.  v.  p.  129  ;  also  p.  104 
note.  *  Ibid,  p.  155. 


ESSAY  III  179 

apparently  the  second  of  these  variant  forms  which  is  the 
name  of  the  father  of  the  Hebrew  race,  Eber,  while  the  name 
Ir  survives  in  the  Hebrew  name  for  city,  just  as  the  root  bri 
of  the  name  of  the  Thracian  Briges  in  that  of  Bria  or  Brea, 
the  Thracian  city.  Their  migrations  and  divisions  are  traced 
in  Genesis  in  the  genealogy  of  the  Shemites,  the  dwellers  in 
Arpachsad  or  Arpa-chesed,  a  name  which  Dr.  Sayce  shows 
to  mean  the  land  (arpa)  of  the  conquerors  (kasidi).^  It  was 
in  this  land  of  the  upper  waters  of  the  Euphrates  that 
Shelah,  the  son  of  Arpachsad,  whose  name  means  the  spear 
or  fire-drill,*  was  bom.  He  was  the  father  of  the  weavers 
and  potters,  who  were  afterwards  the  sons  of  Judah.*  And 
also  of  Eber,  the  father  of  the  Iberian  race,  who  gave  the  name 
Iberia  to  the  Southern  division  of  the  Caucasus,  watered  by 
the  river  Kur,  or  the  tortoise  river,  and  now  called  Georgia. 
It  was  his  sons  who  separated  into  two  races,  in  the  days 
of  his  son  Peleg,  one  section  going  east  with  Joktan,  and 
the  other  proceeding  down  the  Euphrates.  It  is  the  story 
of  this  division  {PeUg)  which  is  told  us  in  the  myth  of  the 
father  with  two  wives,  which  has  come  to  us  from  the 
Caucasian  mountains.  The  father-god  of  these  people  was 
the  god  called  by  the  Akkadians  Lam-ga,  of  which  Naga-r 
is  perhaps  a  dialectic  form  ;  and  by  the  Hebrews  Lamech.* 
He  is  the  Hindu  god  Linga,  the  god  of  the  sign  of  sex.  His 
two  wives  are  called  Adah,  which  is  the  Assyrian  Idu,  the 
Akkadian  Id,  and  Zillah,  the  Akkadian  Tsil-lu.  It  is  they 
who  are  reproduced  in  the  two  daughters  of  the  Zend  Yima, 
who  were  first  the  wives  of  Azi-Dahaka,  of  the  biting  snake 
of  the  land  of  Bauri  or  Babylon,  and  afterwards  of  his  con- 
queror Thraetaona,  the  Trita  Aptya  or  Apam  Napat,  the 
third  {Trita)  son  of  the  waters  (ap)  of  the  Rigveda.     They 

^  Gen.  X.  21-25 ;  Sayce,  Bypaths  of  Bible  KrwwUdgey  ii.  *  Fresh  light  from 
Ancient  Monuments.' 
'  Gesenins,  Thesaurus^  pp.  14,  16,  s.v.  *  Shelah.' 
'  I  Chron.  iv.  21,  23. 
*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Led,  iii.  p.  185  note  I,  186. 


180  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

are  called  in  the  Zendavesta  Savangha-vach,  or  she  who  speaks 
the  speech  (vach)  of  the  East  {savah\  and  Erinavach,  she  who 
speaks  the  speech  {vach)  of  Era  or  Ira,  the  Western  sheep- 
mother.  It  was  their  progeny  who  separated  to  the  East  and 
West.  The  sons  of  Ira  or  Ida  being  the  shepherd  sons  of  Adah, 
and  those  of  Tsil-lu,  the  mother  of  the  race  {lu)  of  the  holy 
snake  Tsir,  are  the  artisans  and  handicraftsmen,  the  sons  of 
Tubal  Cain,  the  first  smith,  the  Turanian  sons  of  Savangha- 
vach,  mother  of  Turan.^  But  the  history  of  the  Iberian 
races,  like  that  of  other  ancient  totemistic  tribes,  is  to  be 
found  in  the  distribution  of  the  worship  of  these  totems,  the 
animal  eaten  by  them  at  their  tribal  sacrificial  feasts.  The 
totem  of  the  men  of  the  Iberian  races,  whose  qualities  they 
sought  to  acquire,  was  the  mighty  boar,  the  untamable  and 
indomitable  king  of  the  forests,  who  dies  facing  his  foes  and 
fighting  to  the  last,  and  that  of  their  women  the  prolific 
sow.  It  was  these  aspirations  after  the  courage  and  fertility 
of  the  pig  which  made  our  Iberian  ancestors  eat  of  the 
board's  head  at  the  annual  New  Yearns  festival,  and  which 
originated  the  festival  held  by  the  Egyptians  on  the  15th 
Pachon,  answering  to  the  31st  March,  in  honour  of  the  sun 
and  moon,  or,  in  other  words,  of  the  union  of  the  two  great 
races  of  the  West,  who  formed  in  Egyptian  parlance  tlie 
complete  eye  of  heaven.  It  was  then  that  both  pigs  and 
antelopes  were  eaten.^  The  antelope  was  the  totem  fatlier 
of  the  race  of  the  sons  of  Nahor,  the  river  Euphrates, 
descended  from  Peleg,  for  Nahor  was  the  father  of  Terah,  tlie 
Akkadian  dara^  the  antelope,^  which  passed  to  India  as  the 
Rishya,  or  black  antelope  of  the  Brahmanas.  Tliis  Egyptian 
spring  festival  corresponds  to  that  of  Aphrodite,  held  in 
Cyprus  on  the  2nd  April,  when  swine  .were  sacrificed ;  and 

^  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Abdn  Yost  54  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  62  note  2 ; 
Gen.  iv.  20-23. 

*  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  yEgypter^  p.  462. 

'  Gen.  xi.  24,  25  ;  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887  ;  Lect,  iv.  p.  280  ; 
F.  Delitzsch,  Assyrische  Studien^  p.  51. 


ESSAY  III  181 

swine  are  the  animals  offered  to  her  as  the  great  mother- 
goddess  in  Argos,  Thessaly  and  Athens.^  The  pig  was  in 
Egypt  especially  sacred  to  Set,  whose  name,  the  overthrown 
(St)  god,*  was  given  him  when  he  was  vanquished  by  Horus, 
and  it  was  Set,  in  the  form  of  a  pig,  that  is,  as  the  fire-god, 
who  is  said  to  have  blinded  the  eyes  of  his  antagonist.^  The 
Dosadhs,  the  Behar  priests  of  the  fire-god  Rahu,  always  offer 
pigs  to  him,  and  eat  them  afterwards.*  Adar  the  fire-god  of 
the  Babylonians  is  called  Lord  of  the  pig,  and  the  name  of  the 
*  pig-god**  is  given  to  Rimmon,  the  god  Mermer  of  the 
Akkadians  and  god  of  the  four  winds,  when  he  is  worshipped 
as  Matu  or  Martu  the  West-wind.^  Istar  herself  is  also  in 
one  of  her  avatars  a  pig-goddess,  for  as  Lady  of  the  Dawn, 
she  was  called  Bis-bizi,  a  reduplicated  form  of  peSy  a  pig.^ 
Pigs  were  the  sacrificial  animals  of  the  Greek  Phlegyes,  and 
swine  were  offered  to  the  corn-mothers,  Demeter  in  Greece, 
and  Ceres  in  Rome,^  and  the  reason  given  for  sacrificing  the 
two  pigs  oflfered  at  the  Roman  Arvalia  to  secure  the  fertility 
of  the  soil,  proves  that  it  was  a  sacrifice  of  the  early  Bronze 
Age  ;  for  it  was  said  that  they  were  slain  to  cleanse  the  holy 
grove,  in  which  the  sacrifice  was  held,  of  the  impurity  caused 
bv  the  iron  or  metal  used  to  fell  the  trees.®  The  use  of  the 
pig  as  a  lustral  animal  has  its  origin  in  Phrygia,  the  country 
whence  the  Indian  fire-worshippers,  the  Bhrigus,  came  to 
India,  and  pig^s  blood  was  used  as  a  bath  to  cleanse  the 
guilty  from  sin  by  the  Phrygians,  Lycians,  and  Greeks.® 
Lastly,  it  was  pigs  who  were  sacred  to  Kirke,  the  sorceress, 

*  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites y  Lect.  viii.  p.  273. 

'  H.  Bnigsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alten  ^gypter^  p.  702.     St 
means  '  to  throw  down,'  '  to  throw  away. ' 
'  Ibid.  pp.  702,  460. 

♦  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ,  vol.  i.  p.  255. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  153. 

•  Ibid,  Lect.  iv.  p.  258  note  2. 

'  Encyclopadia  Britannicay  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  *  Ceres,*  vol.  v.  p.  345. 
8  Ibid  Art.  *  Arval  Brothers,*  vol.  ii.  pp.  671,  672. 
»  IHd,  Art.  •  Phrygia,'  vol.  xvii.  p.  853, 


182  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  beautiful  witch  of  the  Odyssey,  who  appears  among  the 
Phcenicians  as  Asthar  No'^ema,  the  Greek  Nemannum,  or 
Astronome,  the  Naamah  of  Genesis,  who  was  sister  of  Tubal 
Cain.^ 

We  thus  see  that  the  Iberic  race  were  a  united  body  of 
artisans,  handicraftsmen,  and  warriors,  who  worshipped  the 
fire-god,  and  were  the  inventors  of  sorcery  and  magic.  Tliey 
were  the  sons  of  Maga,  the  witch-mother,  whose  descent 
among,  and  rapid  conquest  of,  the  Southern  races,  caused 
them  to  be  remembered  as  Kasidi,  the  conquerors.  But  they 
were  also  the  people  who  substituted  personal  marriage 
for  the  matriarchal  customs  of  tribal  marriages  I  have 
already  described,  and  made  the  family  the  national  unit. 
It  was  as  the  animal  consecrating  marriage  that  Etrurian 
married  couples,  as  we  learn  from  Varro,  sacrificed  a  pig  at 
their  wedding,'^  and  it  was  they  wlio  told  the  history  of  the 
meeting  and  union  of  the  Northern  and  Southern  races  in 
the  myth  of  the  father,  the  house-pole,  with  his  two  wives, 
one  of  whom,  like  Tsil-lu  or  Zillah,  belonged  to  the 
Southern  snake  (7V?>)  worshipping  races  (lu).  This  house- 
father of  two  united  races  appears  in  one  hymn  in  the  Rigveda 
as  Vishnu,  the  boar  who  is  slain  by  Indra,  the  rain-god, 
while  stealing  the  food  of  the  gods,^  and  in  another  6is  the 
three-headed  six-eyed  boar  slain  by  Trita,*  the  Vedic  form  of 
the  Zend  Thraetaona.  Azi  Dahaka,  the  snake-god  slain 
by  Thraetaona,  the  Zend  rain-god,  has  also  three  heads  and 
six  eyes,  and  it  is  he  who  has  two  wives  like  the  Vedic  foes 
of  Indra.  For  Sushna,  the  snake  of  droughts,  called  also 
Ku-yava,  or  he  who  gives  bad  (ku)  barley  iyava)  harvests, 
Na-muchi,  the  non-  (no)  deliverer  {muchi)  of  rain,*  and  Ahi- 
Shuva  the  swelling  (simva)  snake,  the  storm-cloud  which 

*  Lenormant,  *  Genealogies  between  Adam  and  the  Deluge,*  Contem' 
porary  Review^  April  1880,  p.  575. 

'*  Varro,  De  Re  Rustica^  ii.  4 ;  De  Gtibarnatis  Die  Thiere^  German 
Translation,  chap.  v.  p.  343. 

3  Rigveda,  i.  61.  7.  *  Ibid,  x.  99,  6. 

°  Benfcy,  Glossary^  s.v.  *  Na-muchi.' 


ESSAY  III  183 

does  not  give  up  its  rain,  all  have  two  wives. ^  The  names  of 
the  wives  of  Shushna  or  Kuyava  are  Anjasi,  the  nursing 
mother,  the  Ida  of  the  Apri  hymns,  and  Kulishi,  the  flowing 
streams  ;*  the  Sarasvati,  whose  sons  peopled  the  banks  of  the 
rivers  which  rose  in  the  mother-mountain  in  the  East.  These 
wives  also,  like  those  of  Azi  Dahaka,  are  taken  over  by  the 
conquering  god  Indra,  and  are  known  as  Vrishakapayi,  the 
mother  of  the  rain  (vrisha)  ape  {kapi)^  the  wind-god,  Hanu- 
man  and  the  Maruts,  and  Suchi,  the  pure  Soma,  or  the  life- 
giving  rain.  And  these  myths,  telling  of  the  triumph  of  the 
rain-god,  tell  us  not  only  of  the  union  of  the  Northern  and 
Southern  races,  but  also  of  the  religious  revolution  which 
took  place  when  the  Northern  fire- worshippers  reached  the 
land  of  the  rain-god,  rebelled  against  the  fire-god,  and  the 
thraldom  of  his  priests,  the  magicians,  and  found  out  that 
the  rain-,  and  not  the  fire-god,  was  the  supreme  author  of 
life.  But  the  first  rain-god  worshipped  was  the  capricious 
god  of  North-western  Asia,  where  rain  is  scanty,  and  it  was 
he  who  was  the  rain-god  of  the  early  magicians ;  the  boar- 
god  of  fire,  who  would  only  give  up  his  rain  when  compelled 
to  do  so  by  magic  arts.  He  is  by  the  Vedic  name  Shushna, 
identified  with  Shukra,  the  rain-god  of  the  wet  land  (Suka), 
for  Shush-na  and  Shuk-ra  come  from  the  same  root,  Shuk 
or  Suk  (wet),  the  northern  guttural  becoming,  according  to 
the  phonetic  laws  of  Sanskrit,  the  sibilant  sh. 

I  must  now,  in  order  to  make  the  history  of  this  religious 
revolution  clear,  trace  the  course  of  the  fire-worshipping 
magicians  from  the  mother-land  of  Asia  Minor  to  India, 
Assyria,  and  Egypt,  and  show  how  the  rain-god,  whose  visits 
to  earth  were,  in  the  rainless  lands  of  Central  Asia,  precarious 
and  uncertain,  and  wlio  was,  therefore,  not  looked  upon  as 
a  merciful  and  loving  father,  became  in  India  the  god  who 

1  Rigveda,  v.  30,  9 ;  x.  144,  3  ;  viii.  66  (77)  1-6,  45,  4  and  5. 
»  Ibid,  i.  104,  3. 

'  Ibid,  X.  86,  13.     Grassmann,   IVorierbnch  zum  Rigveda^  s.v.   *  Vrisha- 
kajayi.' 


S*  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


K'stowed  his  benefits  freely  and  with  unvarying  regularity 
iMi  the  fortunate  dwellers  in  that  fertile  land.  The  sons  of 
"rulwl  Tain,  the  workers  in  metal,  were,  as  Gresenius  shows, 
the  |HH>plo  ctilU*d  Tubal  and  Meshech  both  in  Ezekiel  and 
on  Assyrian  monuments,  Moschi  (Moaxoc)  and  Tibarenes 
(TkiSiififfvoO  by  Herodotus,  the  dwellers  in  the  land  of 
Mf^^>^.*  They  are  called  in  Genesis  the  sons  of  Japhet, 
whiVHO  name,  like  that  of  his  Egyptian  father-god  Ptah, 
moans  the  opener.^  They  are  the  dwellers  in  the  land 
calltnl  MoKchia  by  Adrenus,  lying  between  tlie  Caspian  and 
Kuxini*  Sea.  This  was  defended  from  the  attacks  of  the 
Northrrn  tribes  by  a  wall,  still  called  the  wall  of  Yayuj  and 
Mavuj,  and  (iesc^nius  connects  the  name  Mag-og  with  the 
Sanskrit  root  rnah^  meaning  the  great  one,  which  is  only 
anoUuT  form  of  the  name  Maga,  or  of  the  mother  called 
Mahi  in  the  Apri  hymns.  She  again,  under  the  name 
llharati,  meaning  she  who  conceives  (Jjhrt\  is  the  mother- 
gtHl(h*ss  of  the  believers  in  the  village-mother,  and  the  union 
of  Ihr  I  wo  shows  the  coalition  between  the  matriarchal  earth- 
>uM'Nhipping  and  the  patriarchal  fire-worshipping  races.  As 
(hi*  Mioth(T-Maga  slie  is  the  maker  or  kncader,^  the  mother 
of  Ihr  building  and  constructing  races.  They  were  the  first 
biiilitrrs  of  towns,  where  they  and  the  cultivating  races 
(Miuld  live  together,  and  their  advent  gave  greatly  in- 
iMH'MHrd  activity  to  the  trade  heretofore  carried  on  between 
lilt*  liirnicrs  and  shepherds.  Their  progress  southward  can 
\\\y  I  riu'cd  through  the  land  of  the  petroleum  springs  to  the 
mini  li  west  of  the  Caspian  Sea,  called  in  the  Bundahish  Atard 
Patiiliiui,  the  land  of  fire  {Atar\  the  Persian  province  of 
Aihir  bigfui.  This  was  watered  by  the  Araxes,  the  Daitya 
III'  wfond  mother-river  of  the  Zendavesta,  the  DitI  or  second 

•  (jisjtnius,  Thesaurus^  p.  1498,  s.v.  'Tubal;'  EzekicI  xxxviii.  i. 

J  liibriiiiis,  Thesaurus,  p.  1 188,  s.v.  'Japhet  ;*  H.  Brugsch*s ^^//^Vjw  nnd 
\i\tholoKie  iUr  Alien  Aigypter,  p.  55.  They  lx)th  come  from  the  tooipatah, 
*  III  Illicit,'  ^Jcn.  X.  2. 

•'  1  'uriiuji,  Griechische  Etymologic^  No.  455,  p.  325. 


ESSAY  III  186 

mother  of  Hindu  mythical  genealogy,  the  mother  of  the 
Daitya  races,  the  Maghada  sorcerers.  This  is  described  in 
the  Zendavesta  as  the  land  of  witchcraft,  for  it  was  poisoned 
by  Angra  Mainyu,  who  put  in  it  a  serpent,  and  the  Daitya 
river  18  said  in  the  Bundahish  to  be,  of  all  the  rivers,  the 
most  full  of  noxious  creatures.^  It  was  there  their  priests 
took  the  name  of  Magi,  by  which  they  have  ever  since  been 
known,  and  it  was  in  this  land  of  natural  wonders  that  they 
perfected  the  system  of  spells,  incantations,  omens,  and 
amulets,  which  had  been  gradually  accumulating  for  ages,  as 
the  most  cherished  part  of  their  national  knowledge,  and 
became  enslaved  to  the  thraldom  of  the  magicians,  sorcerers, 
and  witches,  which  pressed  so  heavily  upon  the  people  of  the 
countries  where  it  was  made  the  national  form  of  religion.  It  is 
tlie  spells,  charms,  and  incantations  of  their  priests,  the  Magi, 
which  form  the  principal  part  of  the  oldest  ritualistic  writings 
in  the  world,  the  oldest  forms  of  the  magical  hymns  of  the 
Akkadians,  of  tlie  Hindu  Atharvaveda,  of  some  magical 
poems  in  the  Rigveda,  and  of  the  magic  songs  of  the  Finns, 
who  have  always  been  looked  on  as  the  great  magicians  of 
the  North.  In  Assyria  it  was  their  god  Adar,  the  fire-god, 
the  Akkadian  Mer-Mer,  the  god  of  the  mid -day  sun  and 
burning  west  wind,  the  origin  il  Bel  of  Nipur  rising  from  the 
shades  of  night,  who  was  the  wild  boar  who  slew  Tammuz 
or  Adonis.*  This  myth  tells  us  both  of  the  close  of  the 
old  and  the  beginning  of  a  new  year  with  the  rainy  season, 
and  also  of  the  religious  change  which  made  the  miracle- 
working  father  of  fire  supreme  over  the  sons  of  the  mother- 
moimtain  Istar  and  the  father-goat  Mul-lil.  It  is  a  repro- 
duction of  this  same  myth  which  makes  the  victory  of  Indra 
over  Sushna,  and  Thraetaona  over  Azi  Dahaka,  tell  us  both 
of  the  defeat  of  the  destructive  god  of  the  burning  summer 
by  the  god  of  the  rains,  and  also  of  the  revolution  which 

'  West,  Bundahish^  xx.  13:  Darmesteter,   Vendiddd^  i.  3  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  v. 
p.  79 ;  iv. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  152  note  i ;  Lcct.  ii.  p.  103. 


186  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

dethroned  the  conquering  fire-god  and  made  the  rain-god 
the  supreme  god.  It  was  in  Phrygia  and  Assyria  that  the 
self-mutilating  phase  of  fire-worship  assumed  most  promi- 
nence. This  custom  probably  arose  at  first  in  the  same  way 
as  an  analogous  custom  has  arisen  among  the  Australian 
tribes,  from  a  wish  to  restrict  the  birth  of  children  to  the 
number  for  which  food  could  be  provided.  It  was,  as 
Herodotus  tells  us,  very  common  among  the  Scythians,^  and 
still  survives  among  some  Tartar  tribes.  It  received  a  special 
impetus  from  the  institution  of  fire-worship  in  Western  Asia^ 
where  the  temples  of  the  fire-god  were,  like  those  of  Istar  at 
Erech,  crowded  with  priests  who  had  unsexed  themselves  to 
become  like  the  fire-god ;  and  it  was  here  also  that  the 
harem,  with  its  eunuch  guardians,  was  formed.  This  last 
custom  was  one  that  grew  out  of  the  changes  made  by  sub- 
stituting perpetual  union  under  one  roof,  or  within  one  circle 
of  huts  dwelt  in  by  the  father  and  his  wives,  for  the  matri- 
archal system  of  separation  between  the  father  and  mother. 
The  change,  which  made  a  woman  the  forced  associate  of  a 
husband  whom  she  shared  with  others,  must  have  been 
peculiarly  hateful  to  those  women  who  had  been  co-equal 
rulers  with  their  brethren  in  these  village  homes,  and  must 
have  taken  a  very  long  time  to  effect.  That  it  was  not 
carried  out  to  its  ultimate  consequences  of  the  complete 
subjugation  of  women  in  Akkadian  times  is  proved  by  the 
Akkadian  laws  which  have  come  down  to  us.  For  these 
make  the  mother  superior  to  the  father  in  the  relations 
between  parents  and  children,  and  reserve  to  the  wife  her 
separate  estate,  while  among  the  Finns  it  is  the  wife  who 
takes  precedence  of  the  husband  in  the  rites  of  domestic 
worship.-  This  acknowledgment  of  female  equality  and  of 
female  right  to  reverence  is  a  relic  of  the  first  forms  of  per- 
manent union  between  the  sexes  which  produced  the  mar- 
riages of  mutual  affection   which  are  tliose  most  common. 

^  Ileroii.  i.  105. 

*  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic ^  p.  185. 


ESSAY  III  187 

among  some  Indian  aboriginal  tribes,  such  as  the  Ooraons 
and  Mundas. 

But  though  the  fire- worshippers  were  the  leaders  of  the 
conquering  patriarchal  races,  a  scarcely  less  important  share 
in  the  formation  of  their  institutions  must  be  assigned  to 
the  hunters  and  shepherds.  It  was  to  them  that  the  dog 
was  especially  sacred  as  their  chief  ally  and  guardian.  They 
brought  to  India  the  various  species  of  dogs  which  are  still 
prized  as  sporting  dogs.  The  parents  of  the  half-grey- 
hound breeds,  called  Rampore  hounds  in  the  North,  and 
Polygars  in  the  South,  and  the  mastifF-like  boar-hounds 
which  are  used  by  the  Bunjaris,  or  tribes  of  bullock  carriers, 
for  guarding  their  convoys  and  hunting  the  pig.  It  was 
they  who  made  the  dog  the  messenger  of  the  gods,  the 
Sanima  of  the  Rigveda,^  the  Hermes  of  Greek  mythology, 
bearing  the  caduceus  or  magic  wand,  and  the  four  hounds, 
or  the  four  winds  sacred  to  Merodach  in  his  earliest  form  of 
the  fire-god.*  The  sacred  dog  appears  in  Egypt  in  Anubis, 
and  the  third  of  the  four  sons  of  Horus,  called  Tua-mutf,  or 
he  who  worships  his  mother,  as  the  Finns  did,  and  both  of 
these  are  jackal-headed  gods.  That  the  dog  was  a  sacred 
animal  to  those  people,  who,  like  the  early  fire-worshippers 
and  agriculturists,  deified  the  seasons,  is  proved  by  one  of 
the  hymns  describing  the  division  of  the  seasons  by  their 
guardians  the  Ribhus,  which  ends  with  saying  that  Basta,  the 
goat,  had  appointed  the  dog  to  waken  them.'^  It  was  these 
tribes  of  sorcerers,  led  by  the  dog,  who  were  the  race  to 
whom  the  authorship  of  the  second  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda 
is  attributed;  for  it  is  called  Grt-Samada  Bhargava  Sau- 
naka,  and  these  names,  according  to  Ludwig  and  Brunn- 
hofer,  mean  the  book  *  belonging  to  (grt)  the  collected 
(mm)  Median  race  {Medah)^  the  sons  of  Bhrigu  {Bhargava\ 
the  fire-god,  belonging  to   the   dog  {Saunaka\^  and   the 

^  Rigveda,  z.  io8 ;  i.  62,  3. 

«  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  pp.  287,  288. 

*  Rigveda,  L  161,  13.  *  Bninnhofer,  Iran  tind  Turan^  vii.  I,  p.  152. 


188  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

reverence  of  the  fire-worshippers  for  the  guardian-dog  is 
shown  in  the  custom  observed  at  all  Parsi  funerals,  that  the 
corpse  should  be  accompanied  by  an  official  leading  the  dog 
which  is  brought  to  protect  the  dead  person  from  the 
attacks  of  the  Nasus ;  the  Greek  vckv^^  the  corpse  demons.^ 
This  title  of  the  second  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda  shows  us 
how  the  Thracian  Briges  came  to  Media  and  India  as  the 
sons  of  Bhrigu,  and  it  is  they  who  are  said  in  the  Rigveda 
to  Miave  first  found  fire  by  the  help  of  Matarishvan,  the 
fire-socket,^  and  to  have  brought  it  to  men,^  and  placed  it  in 
the  navel  of  the  world  *  or,  in  other  words,  placed  it  in  the 
mother-mountain  of  the  East,  the  meeting-place  of  the  sons 
of  the  goat  and  the  village  mother,  as  the  sacred  Shu  stone, 
the  Salagramma  of  the  Hindus.  This  generating  fire  became 
the  Hindu  rain  and  thunder-god  Shukra.  The  Finnic 
god  Uk-ko,  and  the  Hindu  Ush-ana,  who  is  also  called 
Bhargava,  or  the  son  of  Bhrigu.  They  also  sacrificed  the 
dog  as  well  as  the  pig  to  the  fire-god ;  for  though  Herodotus 
tells  us  that  no  Magian  will  kill  a  dog,^  yet  the  prohibition 
to  kill  wantonly  does  not  forbid  the  sacrifice  of  the  animal, 
but  rather  enjoins  it,  for  the  totemistic  animal  is  that  which 
can  only  be  lawfully  killed  as  part  of  a  ceremonious  sacri- 
fice. Thus  the  Rigveda  tells  us  of  the  sacrifice  of  Shuna- 
shepa,  whose  name  shows  him  to  be  the  son  of  a  dog 
(Shufm)y  who  was  bound  to  three  sacrificial  posts  (drupadas).^ 
The  Spartans  also  off^ered  dogs  to  Ares,  and  the  Romans  to 
Mars,  at  the  Arvalia,  besides  two  goats  and  a  dog  to  Innuus 
at  the  Lupercalia.^  Dogs  were  especially  sacred  to  the 
Tyrean  Melgarth  and  the  Athenian  Hercules,  for  his  shrine 


*  Tide,    Outlines  of  the  History  of  Afuient  Religions,  *  Religion  among 
the  Eranians,*  §  io6,  p.  174. 

-  Rigveda,  x.  46,  2  ;  i.  60,  I  ;  iii.  5,  10. 

^  /Ifid.  i.  58,  6  ;  i.  195,  2.  *  Ibid.  i.  143,  4. 

^  ncrodotus,  C//V7,  140.  *  Rigveda,  i.  24.  13. 

Jincyclopicdia  Britannica,  Ninth  Edition,  *  Ares  and  Lupercalia,*  vol.  ii. 
p.  485  ;  XV.  p.  96. 


ESSAY  111  189 

at  Athens  was  called  Cynosarges,  or  the  dog*'s  yard.^  It 
was  as  the  sons  of  Caleb,  the  dog  {halb\  who  killed  the  false 
gods  of  Southern  Palestine,  Shesh-ai,  Ahi-man,  and  Tol- 
mai,*  and  of  his  brother  Ram,  the  god  Rama  of  the  Hindus, 
the  son  of  Ab-ram,  the  father  {ah)  of  the  dark  heights 
{ram\  the  mother  -  mountain,  that  they  descended  into 
Palestine,  and  became  by  their  union  with  the  Shus,  who 
appear  in  Genesis  as  Shua,  the  wife  of  Judah,  the  fathers  of 
the  tribe  of  Judah.  His  name,  meaning  *  praised,**  is  the 
counterpart  of  the|^Hindu  name  of  the  fire-god  Nara  shafilsa, 
praised  {sam-sa)  of  men  {nara\  and  as  the  fourth  of  the  sons 
of  Jacob  he  takes  the  place  of  the  fire-god.  It  was  at  the 
city  of  Caleb,  called  Caleb-Ephratah,  that  Hezron,  the 
father  of  Ram,  died,  and  Caleb,  in  one  of  the  genealogies  in 
Chronicles,  which  calls  him  the  brother  of  Shuah,  is  said  to 
be  the  ancestor  of  Ir-nahash,  or  the  city  (/r)  of  the  Nags,  a 
race  whose  origin  1  will  trace  presently,  and  it  was  from  this 
confederacy  that  Shelah,  the  father  of  the  weavers  and 
potters,  was  bom  in  the  land  of  Arpa-chesed.' 

After  they  had  consolidated  their  power,  and  organised 

^  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites ,  Lect.  viiL  p.  173  note. 

'  These  names  have  proved  an  undecipherable  crux  to  Hebrew  Lexico- 
graphers, and  are  certainly  not  Hebrew  words  ;  but  Shesh-ai  is  the  same 
name  as  that  of  the  Hindu  snake-god  Shesha,  who  supports  the  tortoise 
earth,  and  who  was  first  Sek-nag,  or  the  wet-god.  Ahi-man,  again,  re- 
produces the  Sanskrit  Ahi,  which  is  the  Sanskritised  form  of  £chi-s,  the 
mother-snake  of  the  Greek  Achaeans,  the  having  or  holding  snake,  and  Ahi, 
the  child-snake,  is  a  name  of  the  Egyptian  Osiris  (H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und 
Mythologie  der  Alten  Mgypter^  pp.  288,  413),  while  Tol-mai  contains  the 
name  of  the  Akkadian  Tal-tal  or  Dddal,  meaning  *  the  very  wise,'  one  of  the 
Akkadian  names  of  la.  One  of  the  early  mythical  kings  of  Telloh,  is  called 
Tal-tal-kur-gulla,  the  wisdom  {tal-tal)  of  the  great  i^ttlla)  mountain  of  the 
East  {kur)  (Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  28,  note  2 ;  As- 
syrian Grammar  Syllabaryj  No.  16).  The  names  would  appear  to  mean, 
Ahi-man,  the  child-snake,  son  of  the  snake  Shesha  and  the  wise  {tal)  mother 
{mai),  and  to  be  another  form  of  the  mythology  of  the  birth  of  Dumu-zi,  the 
son  of  life,  from  the  mother  earth,  encircled  by  the  girdling  snake,  and  this 
interpretation  is  the  more  probable,  as  we  know  that  the  early  religion  of 
Palestine  cam^  from  Babylonia. 

*  I  Chron.  ii  10-16,  18,  25;  iv.  11,  12,  21-23;  ^c">  xxxviii.  2. 


190  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

their  forces,  in  the  land  of  fire,  the  sons  of  Maga  went  south- 
ward into  Assyria,  and  eastward  to  the  Oxus,  subduing  the 
land  as  they  went,  and  it  was  on  the  banks  of  the  Oxus  that 
they  took  the  name  of  Vahlika,  from  their  settlement  at 
Balkh.     It  was  thence,  by  way  of  Herat,  on  the  Harahvaiti, 
the  original  Sarasvati,^  that  they  came  down  into  India. 
Their  progress  is  described  in  the  Zendavesta,  where  they 
are  called  Keresavazda,  or  the  people  of  the  horned  (keresa) 
club  (vazd(i\  the  allies  of  Frangrasyan,  the  Turanian  king. 
They  conquered  and  slew  Agraeratha,  the  king  of  Sauka- 
vastiin,  whose  name,  meaning  the  leader  of  the  foremost 
(offra)  chariot,  denotes  the  goat-god  who,  according  to  the 
Rigveda,  drew  the  chariot  of  Pushan,^  the  god  of  the  black 
cloud,  called  in  the  Bundahish  Pashang,  father  of  Aghrae- 
ratha,  and  destroyed  the  govenmients  set  up  by  Kavi  Usha, 
another  form  of  the  goat-god,  and  father  of  the  Kushite 
kings.      They   killed  Syavarshan,   son  of  Usa,   who   ruled 
Kang-desh  or  India,  for  the  Northern  Punjab  is  still  called 
Kangra,  and  thus  made  themselves  masters  of  tlie  land  of 
the  Five  Rivers.^     They  were  there  known  not  only  as  the 
Vahlika,  the  sons  of  Vahlika,  brother  of  king  Shan-tanu, 
the  father  of  the  royal  races  of  India,  whose  name  means 
long  (tanu)  work  (Shan)  or  long-enduring  time,  but  as  the 
Takkas,  Tugras  or  Trigartas.     As  tlie  Takkas  they  still 
form  one  of  the  most  powerful  and  wealthy  tribes  in  the 
Punjab,  the  founders  of  the  great  city  of  Taxila,  the  Hindu 
Takka-sila  or  rock  of  the  Takkas,  taken  by  Alexander  the 
Great.     Their  name  of  Takkas,  or  Takshas,  meaning  the 
makers  or  artificers,  which  is  connected  witli  the  Akkadian 
tuk^  a   stone,   is   derived   the  root  tvaks^  from  which   the 

^  This  is  the  birth  or  the  mother-province  of  the  holy  land  of  the  Zenda- 
vesta. 'DzxuiQsiQitx^  Zendavesia  Vettdiddd  Fargard^  \.  13;  also  Introductory 
Note,  S.B.E.  vol.  iv.  pp.  7,  2. 

2  Rijjveda,  vi.  55,  6. 

'  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Zamyad  Yost,  xi.  71;  xii.  77;  Farvardin  Yast^ 
132;  \NQSiy  Bmtdahish,  xxix.  5;  xxxi.  25;  Bahman  Yast,  m.  26;  S.B.E. 
vol.  xxiii.  pp.  303,  304,  222;  also  p.  64,  note  i ;  vol.  v.  pp.  117,  136,  226. 


ESSAY  III  191 

name  of  Tvashtar  the  primaeval  creating-god  of  the  Rigveda, 
is  formed.  From  Takka-sila  they  came  southward  to  the 
country  of  the  Madras,  or  intoxicated  (mcui)  people,  whose 
capital,  called  Sakala  or  Sailgala,  the  city  of  the  united  tribes 
(&inga\  is  situated  between  the  rivers  Chenab  and  Ravi, 
on  the  stream  now  called  Ayak,  which  is  the  Apaga  of  the 
Mahabharata,  and  the  Apaya  of  the  Rigveda.^  Their  father 
king  in  the  Maliabliarata  is  Shalya,  or  the  son  of  the  Sal- 
tree,  the  parent  tree  of  the  Dravidian  races.  They  give  us 
a  distinct  clew  to  their  origin  in  their  mythic  genealogy,  for 
they  call  themselves  the  sons  of  the  two  Nagas,  or  horned 
snake,  Takht-nag  and  Basak-nag  (Vasuki),  or  the  sons  of 
the  race  of  artificers  and  of  the  Basque  spring-god  Vas  or 
Bas.  They  worship  three  gods,  Shesh-nag,  Takht-nag,  and 
Basuk-nag,  under  the  symbol  of  an  iron  trident  or  tri-sula,  the 
homed  club,  called  Keresa-vazda  in  the  Zendavesta.  These 
are  generally  from  three  to  six  feet  long,  some  being  as 
much  as  thirty  feet  high,  having  a  wooden  staff,  enclosed  in 
an  iron  sheathing.^  But  before  these  Takkas  were  the  sons 
of  the  Nag  or  water-snake,  they,  on  their  first  entry  into 
India  as  the  sons  of  the  witch-mother  Maga,  called  them- 
selves the  sons  of  Kaikaia;  for  it  was  from  her,  as  the 
mother  mountain,  that  the  Turanian  Gonds,  who  still  call 
themselves  Koi-tor,  or  sons  of  the  mountain  {ko\  took  their 
name,  which  they  have  left  behind  them  in  the  Persian  Koh. 
But  the  name  Koi,  when  it  passed  from  a  tribal  surname  into 
historical  legend,  became  Kai-kaia,  and  she  was  the  mother 
of  Bharata,  the  half-brother  of  the  god  Rama,  both  of  them 
being  the  sons  of  Dasaratha,  king  of  Ayodhya,  he  of  the  ten 
(dasa)  chariots  {ratha\  or  the  ten  lunar  months  of  gestation. 
He,  like  the  other  father-gods  of  the  age  of  the  fire-wor- 
shippers,  had    two  wives,  Kai-kaia  and   Kansh-aloya,  the 

^  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India^  pp.   iSo-i86;  Rigveda,  iii. 

*  Oldham,   *  Serpent  Worship  in   India,*  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic 
Society^  July  1891,  pp.  361,  362,  387,  388-32a 


192  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

mother  of  Rama,  whose  name  means  the  house  {cUoya)  of  the 
Kushikas ;  and  the  Rama  myth,  which  tells  us  that,  on  his 
father'*8  death,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  Bharata 
ruled  Ayodhya  before  Rama,  is  a  legendary  statement  of 
the  well-known  fact  that  before  North-western  India  was 
called  Kosala,  or  the  land  of  the  Kushikas,  it  was  called,  as 
it  frequently  is  still,  Ganda  or  Gonda,  the  country  of  the 
Gonds,^  just  as  Central  India,  called  in  Sanskrit  Maka- 
kosala,  is  called  in  common  parlance  Gondwana.  When 
Bharata,  in  the  Ramayana,  visited  his  mother-land,  he 
came  to  the  country  whence  the  five  rivers  of  the  Punjab 
rise,  and  this  is  the  land  of  the  five  mysterious  bowmen, 
called  in  the  Mahabharata  the  Kai-kaia  brothers  who,  in  the 
wars  between  the  Kauravyas  and  Pandavas,  reduplicate  them- 
selves, and  fight  on  both  sides.*  It  was  from  these  mother- 
mountains  of  the  Indian  Gond  race  that  the  Gonds,  called 
the  sons  of  the  squirrel,  are  said,  in  their  national  epic  of  the 
Song  of'  Lingal^  to  have  been  brought  by  their  father-god 
Lingal,  the  god  of  the  Linga,  whom  I  have  already  shown  to 
be  the  Hebrew  Lamech.  He  took  them  from  this  land  where 
the  Jumna  rises  to  the  Iron-valley  of  Central  India,  where  they 
were  united  with  the  forest  matriarchal  tribes,  the  growers 
of  rice,  the  daughters  of  Rikad  Gowadi,  the  squirrel  {rik)  or 
tree  {ruJc)  father-god  of  tlie  village  {gozca)  races,^  whose 
history  I  have  traced  in  Essay  ii.  It  is  these  sons  of  the 
squirrel,  the  first  Turanian  immigrants,  whom  we  find  in  the 
Bhuyas  of  Central  India,  the  Khandait  Paiks  of  Orissa  and 
the  Musahars  of  Behar,  all  of  whom  call  themselves  the 
sons  of  the  squirrel  Rikhiasan  or  Rikmun,  which  is  also  a 
token  of  the  Kharwars,  Mundas,  and  Rautias.^     The  god  of 

1  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India,  p.  408. 

'  Mahabharata  Udhyoga  Parva,  Ivi.  p.  202. 

3  Ilislop,  Aboriginal  Tribes  of  Central  India,  published  by  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  Central  Provinces,  where  the  Song  of  Lingal  is  given  in  full,  with 
a  verbal  translation. 

*  Rislcy,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  pp.  112,  113;  vol.  ii. 
Apiicndix  i.  pp.  79»  io7»  123. 


ESSAY  III  193 

the  Gonds,  as  described  in  the  Soiig  of  Liiigal,  is  like  the  god 
of  the  Takkas,  the  god  called  Pharsi,  meaning  the  trident. 
The  rules  for  its  construction,  given  in  the  Sovg  of  lAngal  to 
the  Gonds,  who  succeeded  the  first  immigrants,  show  the 
origin  of  the  worship.  Two  men  of  the  drummer  tribe 
called  Dahak-wajas,  were  sent  into  the  jungle  to  cut  a 
female  hill-bamboo,  and  into  this  was  fixed  an  iron  trident 
called  Pharsi  Pot.  The  socket-bamboo  and  the  trident 
Pharsi  was  tlien  consecrated  by  being  bound  together  by  a 
chain  of  bells,  the  sign  of  the  bell  god  Gliagara  or  Gangara, 
and  this  is  baptized  by  pouring  a  pitcher  full  of  daru 
(spirits)  over  it.  It  then  becomes  Pharsi  Pen  or  the  female 
(pen)  trident  {Phars\\  the  sexless  fire-god,  with  his  two 
wives,  Manko  Rayetal  and  Jango  Rayetal.  But  this  god, 
which,  we  are  told  in  the  Song  ofLingal^  is  the  god  of  the 
reformed  Gonds,  is  not  the  original  god  of  tlie  first  immi- 
grants. This  god,  however,  is  still  worsliipped  by  the 
Gonds  in  the  form  of  a  javelin,  the  Shelah  or  spear  of  the 
Jewish  genealogy,  cased  in  a  female  bamboo,  and  coated 
with  Kusha  grass,  like  tlie  sacrificial  stake  of  the  Soma 
sacrifice,  which  was  girt  with  three  ropes  of  this  grass  at  a 
level  with  the  sacrificer^s  navel,^  while  his  two  wives,  as  the 
trident  god,  were  originally  the  wives  of  the  tiger-god 
Rayetal,  who,  as  Vyaghra,  the  Sanskrit  tiger-god,  became 
the  uniting  father  of  the  Vajjian  or  tiger- race,  formed  by 
the  union  of  the  Mallis  or  mountain  tribes  with  the 
Licchavis  or  trading  races,  whose  capital  was  Vesiill.  It  is 
this  god  of  the  bamboo  pole,  which  is  that  which  is  said  in 
the  Mahfibhiirata  to  have  been  set  up  by  King  V^asu,  the 
father  god  of  the  Takkas  on  the  Sakti  mountains.  But  this 
god  of  the  Indian  Vasu  was,  though  similar,  yet  different 
from  the  original  Gond  god,  for  Vasu''s  pole  was  a  single  rod 
or  pole  of  the  male  bamboo,  the  Ashera  or  rain-pole  of  the 
Jews,  and  we  see  in  it  evidence  of  the  changed  belief  which 
made  the  rain-god  the  father-god  in  place  of  the  fire-god. 

^  Eggcling,  Sat,  Brdh.  iii.  7,  I,  19,  20;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  172. 

13 


lJ)t  Tin:  lirUNG  RACES  OF  PREHLSTORIC  TIMES 

Ami  it  was  this  reli<^ions  change  whicli  led  to  the  worship  of 
the   Nasra  or  rain-snake.     I  have  already  shown   that  the 
snake-father  of  the  snake  races  in  Greece  and  Asia  Minor, 
and  of  the  matriarchal  races  in  India,  was  the  snake  Echis, 
I  he   holding   snake,  the   Vritra,  or   enclosing  snake  of  the 
Rigveda,  the  cultivated  land   which   girdled  the  Tenienos. 
This  was   I  he  Sanskrit  and  Egyptian   snake  Ahi,  and  the 
(iennan  Kcke  or  Ekkhart,^  the  true-hearted  knight  who  sits 
«MiUide  I  he  hill  of  Venus,  the  matriarchal  village,  the  home 
of   legalised    concubinage,    and   warns   Tannhauser   against 
ent(*ring  il.     Hut  the  Naga  snake  was  not  the  encircling 
Nunke,  hut  the  offspring  of  the  house-})ole,  and  in  this  form 
it  was  t'/dled  l)v  the  Jews  the  husband  or  Ra^d  of  the  land. 
Hut  as  the  heavenly  snake  it  was  the  old  village  snake  trans- 
ferrcd  to  heaven,  called  the  Nag-kshetra,  or  field  of  the  Nags, 
inid  I  here  it  was  the  girdling  air-god  who  encircled  the  cloud- 
niolhers,    the    Apsaras,    the    daughters   of   the    Abyss,  the 
ANsyrinn  Ai)su,  and  marked  their  boundaries  as  the  village 
MMiike  did  those  of  the  holy  grove  on  earth.     Hut  cm  earth 
(he  water-snake  was  the  magical  rain-pole,  called  the  god 
l)/irli/i,.M't  up  by  the  Dravidian  j\Irdes  in  front  of  every  house.- 
Ilr  and  his  wife  Dharti  Mai  are  worsliipped  every  year  at  the 
full   moon  of  Magh,  the  witch-mother/^     I'wo  branches  of 
llir  Sid-lrce  are  placed  as  their  images  in  the  centre  of  the 
Akra  or  dancing-ground,  and  the  villagers  dance  round  them 
hliouting  '  Hur,  bur**  {Pudendum  maUchrc\  a  cry  which  means 
tivmbolicallv  may  they  have  many  children.    'J'hese  two  <jods 
ari*  worshipped  sometimes  in  the  male  form  and  sometimes 
ah  the  female,  and  sometimes  as  the  god  l)es-auli,  the  village 
guardian,  called   Jahir   Hum    or   Jahir  Era  by  almost  all 
Dravidian  and  Kolarian  tribes,  Bhuyas,  Hhumij,   Cheroos, 
llos,    Kharias,   ]\Iundas,    Ooraons,  and   Santals.*      It  is  to 

'  Nfannhardtf  Gennauische  Mytheu^  pp.  210.  93. 

*■'  Kisley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  ii.  p.  57, 

*  ////»/.  vol.  ii.  pp.  70,  71. 

'  il'U.  vol.  i.  pp.  1 15,  124,  202,  327,  468;  vol.  ii.  pp.  103,  104, 146,  147,  232. 


ESSAY  III  195 

Dharti  that  the  Kharias  sacrifice  pigs,  and  they  are  the 
guardian  gods  of  springs   and  watercourses,  called   dhara. 
The  name  of  the  god  Dhara  survives  in  the  Rigveda,  wliere 
it  is  constantly  used  to  denote  the  stream  of  Soma.^     But  in 
the  hymn  to  the  Ashvins  it  is  specially  connected  with  the 
rain-gods,  the   seven  Gandhar\'a  Soma  guardians,  and  the 
reform  consequent  on  his  worship,  for  it  is  said  the  Sapta 
vadhri  (the  seven  eunuchs)  by  their  prayers  obtained  the 
dhara  of  Agni.-     Dhara  is  translated  '  sharpness,**  but  the 
connection  between  the  dhdrd  and  the  seven  guardians  of 
Soma,  the  life-giving  rain,  clearly  shows  that  the  poet  means 
that  Agni,  the  heavenly  fire-god,  the  god  of  lightning,  sent 
down  streams  of  water  in  answer  to  their  prayers,  and  in 
this  passage  we  find  the  consummation  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
new  theology  that  the  parent  gods  were  Agni -Soma,  the 
twins,  the  lightning  which,  with  the  cloud -mothers,  bring 
forth  life-creating  rain.     But  we  find  in  Akkadian  theology 
further  evidence  of  the  Northern  origin  of  the  god  Dhfira,  for 
dara,  meaning   the   antelope,  is  a  name  of  the  Akkadian 
rain-god  la.      He  is  called  'the  antelope  of  dara  of  the 
deep,**  '  the  antelope  the  creator,**  and  this  antelope,  the  son 
of  the  rivers,  is,  according  to  F.  Delitzsch,  called  in  Genesis 
Terah,  the  son  of  Nahor,  the  river  Euphrates,^  and   the 
father  of  Ab-ram,  the  father  (ab)  of  the  heights  (ram)  of  the 
race  of  Eber,  collected  round  the  mother-mountain  of  the 
East.     It  is  the  same  genealogy  which  is  exactly  prescr\'ed 
in  the  Hindu  legend  of  Rama,  for  he  is  the  successor  of 
Bharata,  the  son  of  the  witch-mother,  the  fire- worshippers, 
the  children  of  Lamech,  and  his  mother,  Kaushaloya,  is  the 
mother    house   {aloya)   of  the    Kushite    race,   the   Indian 
Kushika,  who  made  the  mother-mountain  of  the  East  the 
centre  of  the  tortoise  earth,  and  it  was  these  people  who, 
like  the  Egyptians,  traced  their  descent^Jto'the  boar-god,  the 

^  Rigveda,  ix.  2,  3,  16,  7,  58,  I.  ^  IbicU  viii.  62,  9. 

3  Sayce,   Hibhert  Lectures  for   1887,    Lect.    iv.    p.    282*     F.  Delitzsch, 
Assyrien  Studien^  P>  5I> 


196  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

fire-god,  and  the  river  antelope.  As  for  the  name  dara^  it 
is  iipparently  derived  from  tlie  Munda  word  da,  water, 
which  became  the  Gond  daru^  the  fire  or  creating  (n/) 
water  {da\  the  spirits  used  to  consecrate  their  god.  It  is 
the  transition  stage  from  the  worsliip  of  intoxicating  spirits 
drunk  by  the  wizard  priests  to  the  woi*ship  of  the  pure 
water  of  life  tliat  we  have  still  further  to  consider,  and  in 
doing  this  we  must  trace  the  progress  of  sacrificial  ritual. 
We  have  already  seen  that  in  the  female  altar  in  the  form  oi'  a 
woman  it  is  based  on  phallic  worship,  combined  with  the  wor- 
ship of  the  mother-mountain,  reproduced  in  the  raised  female 
altar  made  to  slope  to  the  East.  I  have  also  shown  how  the 
ruling  idea  of  the  formation  of  alliances  between  stranger 
tribes  by  the  interfusion  of  blood  made  this  the  binding  tie 
between  the  Northern  husband  and  the  alien  Southern  bride. 
It  is  the  same  idea  of  the  interfusion  of  blood  which  appears 
in  the  custom,  almost  universally  observed  by  the  early 
slayers  of  animal  victims,  of  making  its  blood  flow  into 
the  trench  round  the  altar  made  by  digging  out  the  earth 
used  to  raise  the  central  mound.  As  the  victim  slain  was 
tlie  tribal  totem,  it  was  held  that  its  blood,  when  in- 
terfused with  the  earth  round  and  under  the  mother-altar, 
consummated  an  alliance  between  the  sacrificers  and  the 
land.  This  custom  was  observed  both  by  the  Arabs  and 
Phcenicians.^  It  appears  also  in  the  story  of  the  siicrifice  of 
Shunah  shepa,who  was  to  be  slain  by  his  father  Ajigarta, mean- 
ing the  pit  or  trench  {garta\  of  the  goat  {aja)  and  in  the  sacri- 
ficial pit  found  by  Dr.  Schliemann  at  Tiryns  in  the  centre  of 
the  men''s  courtyard, as  well  as  in  those  found  in  Asklepieion  at 
Athens,  and  in  tlie  temple  of  the  Kabiroi  in  Samo-thrace.- 
It  is  also  shadowed  forth  in  the  rules  for  the  sacrifice  of 
lludraTriambaka,  orlludra  with  the  three  wives,  a  god  who 
exactly  reproduces  the  Gond  god  Pharsi  Pen,  who,  as  the 
male  god,  the  shaft  of  the  trident,  has  the  three  wives,  the 

^  Robertson  Smith,  /Religion  of  the  Semites,  Lect.  iv.  p.  213. 

2  Schuchhardt's  Sc\\\icm2iTiTC^  Excavations ,  fig.  loi,  pp.  107,  108. 


ESSAY  III  197 

female  bamboo,  Manko  Rayetal  and  Jango  Rayetal.  The 
Triambika,  or  sacrifices  to  the  three  forms  of  Amba,  the 
three  mother-daughters  of  the  King  of  Kashi  Amba,  Am- 
bika  and  Amvalika,  is  ordered  to  be  made  outside  the  con- 
secrated ground,  at  the  north  of  the  sacrificial  area  where, 
as  in  the  sacrifices  to  Hecate  at  Athens,  two  cross  roads  meet, 
showing  that  it  was  a  sacrifice  of  a  race  who  recognised  the 
four  quarters  of  heaven,  meeting  as  the  fire-cross  in  the  centre 
of  the  altar.  The  offering,  which  is  of  rice  cakes,  the  oflTering 
made  to  the  old  mother-gods  of  the  land  before  Northern 
bloody  sacrifices  were  introduced,  is  to  be  placed  on  a  palasha- 
leaf,  sacred  to  the  god  Desauli  of  the  Ho  Kols,  and  buried 
in  a  mole-hill.^  Here  we  find  the  mother-mountain  fed  with 
the  food  of  the  land,  and  it  was  this  food  which  was  changed 
by  the  Northern  immigrants  into  the  blood  which  vitalised 
the  land  and  made  blood-brotherhood  between  it  and  the 
newcomers.  These  Northern  Takkas  seem,  before  they 
entered  India,  to  have  passed  beyond  the  early  stage  of 
savagery  exhibited  by  the  Arab  sacrificers,  the  sons  of  the 
mountain  who  used  to  eat  their  victims  raw  and  drink  their 
blood ;  -  but  they  certainly  retained  the  sacrificial  pit,  and 
in  place  of  the  original  single  pit  of  Aji-garta,  they  made 
three  pits  sacred  to  these  gods  of  the  trident.  Hence  they 
gained  the  name  of  Tri-gartas  or  the  people  of  the  three  (in) 
pits  {gartas\  the  name  by  which  they  are  always  called  in 
the  Mahabharata.  It  was  in  these  three  pits  that  the 
three  drupadas  or  sacrificial  stakes,  to  which  Shunah 
shepa  was  bound,  in  the  Rigveda,  were  placed ;  and  it  was 
under  the  banner  of  the  sacrificial  stake,  the  Yupa,  that 
Vahlika,  the  father  of  the  Takkas  and  his  ten  sons  joined 
the  army  of  the  Kauravyas.^     But  these  sacrificial  pits,  with 

^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh.  ii.  6,  2,  5-10;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  438,  440. 

*  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites y  Lect.  vi.  p.  210 ;  Lect.  ix. 

p.  324. 
.  *  Mahabharata  Bhishma  {Bhiskmavada)  Parva,  Ixxiv.  Ixxv.  Ixxx.  pp.  273, 

27S  293- 


198  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  stake  in  the  centre  of  the  liill  or  mole-hill,  placed  tliere 
as  the  semblance  of  the  motlier-mountain,  belonged  essen- 
tially to  the  theology  of  the  father-god,  and  always  remained 
apart  outside  the  sacrificial  area  consecrated  to  the  mother- 
earth,  just  as  the  sacrificial  stakes  in  the  Soma  sacrifice  were 
placed  outside  to  the  east  of  the  consecrated  area,^  For 
the  Yupa,  or  sacrificial  stake  sacred  to  Vishnu,  the  boar-god, 
is  essentially  pliallic,  as  it  is  directed  to  be  made  eight-sided, 
the  number  sacred  to  the  fire-god,  and  in  the  form  of  a 
phallus.-  The  way  in  wliicli  these  three  pits  were  to  be 
placed  is  described  in  the  rules  given  in  the  Grihya  Sutra, 
for  the  sacrifice  of  the  spit  or  roasted  ox  offered  to  Kshetra- 
pati,  the  lord  (pati)  of  the  fields  {kshetra\  called  Rudra  or 
Hara,  the  wind  and  storm-god,  the  father  of  snakes.^  The 
sacrificer  was  to  prepare  two  huts  to  the  west  of  the  raised 
fire  altar,  the  mother-mountain.  The  ox  which  was  to  be 
sacrificed  called  Ish-ana  is  to  be  taken  to  the  southern  hut, 
his  wife,  the  sacred  cow,  called  the  Mldh-usliI  or  bountiful 
goddess  to  the  northern  hut,  while  in  the  middle  towards 
the  east,  the  calf  called  Jayanta,  the  son,  the  Egyptian  bull. 
Apis,  the  later  husband  of  two  wives,  is  to  stand.  Rice  is 
offered  to  the  mother-cow  on  Palilsha  leaves,  and  the  ox 
is  slain,  cooked,  and  eaten  by  the  uterine  relations  or  relations 
on  the  mother's  side  of  the  sacrificer.*  The  sacrifice  was  to 
be  offered  in  the  autumn  or  the  spring,  and  the  animal 
sacrificed  was  to  be  tied  by  the  neck  to  the  sacrificial  post, 
which  in  this  case  was  a  branch  of  the  sacred  Paliisha  tree, 
girdled  with  Kusha  grass.'*     This  sacrifice  is  a  variant  form 

1  See  plan  of  Sacrificial  Ground,  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brak,  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi. 

p.  475- 
'^  Eggeling,  Sai.  Brah.  iii.  6,  4,  1,9;  iii.  7,  I,  28 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p|>. 

162,  164,  174;  Sachau*s  AIbcruni*s  India,  chap.  Iviii.  pp.  103,  104* 

^  Oldc-nberg,   Grihya  Sutra  Ashvalayaiia^  Grihya  Sutra,  iv.   8,  I,  19,  23, 

27,  28  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxix.  pp.  255-251. 

*  Oldenberg,    Grihya  Sutra  Heranyakesin    Grihya  Sutra,   ii.    3,  8,  9  ; 
Apostumba,  7,  20;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxx.  pp.  220-224,  290-291. 

*  Oldenberg,  Asvalayana  GHhya  Sutra,  iv.  8,  I,  2,  15  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxix, 
pp.  255.256. 


ESSAY  III  199 

of  the  Gond  sacrifice  offered  by  all  Gond  house-fathers  to 
Mu-Chandri,  the  mother-moon,  every  year  at  the  end  of  the 
rains.  He,  attended  by  his  family  and  servants,  builds  in 
a  corner  of  the  family  field  a  hut,  about  a  foot  and  a  half 
high,  wjtli  sods,  which  he  thatches,  like  the  altar  of  the 
Brahmanas,  with  Kusha  grass.  The  two  walls  are  supported 
by  branches  of  the  Palasha  tree  with  leaves  growing  on  them. 
Inside  the  hut  a  fire  is  lighted  and  a  little  milk  boiled  in 
an  earthen  pot  till  it  boils  over,  and  this,  with  rice,  molasses 
(goor)^  and  millet  (kookoo\  are  offered  to  Mu-Chandri ; 
while  two  small  holes  are  made  at  each  side  of  the  hut  for 
the  two  wives,  and  in  these  wheat,  the  grain  of  the  Northern 
fanner,  is  sown.^  In  this  ritual  we  have  the  triangular 
arrangements  of  the  three  paridkis  in  the  fire  altar  of  the 
Brahmanas,  the  calf  to  the  east  forming  the  apex  of  the 
triangle,  and  it  is  this  form  of  sacrifice  which  is  united  with 
that  of  the  oblong  altar  when  the  new  ritual  was  introduced 
by  the  fire- worshippers,  and  the  triangularly  arranged  pits 
and  huts  became  the  triangle  of  the  paridliM.  But  this 
triangle  also  represents  another,  and  to  the  agricultural 
tril>e8  the  most  important  phase  of  evolutionary  national 
religion,  the  definition  of  the  year,  which,  in  this  case,  is  the 
Northern  year  of  three  seasons.  The  calf  represents  the 
new  year,  and  it  is  to  secure  his  inheritance  that  the  old  or 
father-year  is  slain,  for  the  benefit  of  the  nation  and  the 
fructification  of  the  soil,  or,  according  the  Scandinavian 
saying,  *for  the  bettering  of  the  year.**  The  huts  which,  in 
the  ritual  I  have  quoted,  were  placed  on  the  surface  of  the 
ground,  were  those  which  had  descended  from  the  Phrygian 
becj-hive  huts  which  were  excavated  on  the  hillside,  and 
surrounded  by  the  ditch  from  which  the  earth  used  in  their 
construction  was  taken,  and  this  cavity  formed  the  sacrificial 
pit.  This  again,  as  the  altar  was  always  placed  in  the 
village  grove  in  the  centre  of  the  village,  was  looked 
upon  as  the  ancestral  home  of  the  community,  in  which  the 

*  Elliot,  Hoshiiftffabad  Sfttlemeni  Re  port ^  §  99,  p.  12$. 


aOO  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

sacrificial  stake  took  the  place  of  the  house  pole ;  and  it  was 
only  under  the  shade  of  the  central  tree,  the  village  temple, 
whose  roof  was  supported  by  the  pole,  that  the  tribal  totem 
could  lawfully  be  killed  and  eaten.  It  is  a  reminiscence  of 
this  belief  wliich  survives  in  the  name  of  tlie  Bauris,  who 
look  on  themselves  as  sons  of  the  doi^,  an  animal  which  they 
will  never  kill.^  These  people,  who  are  known  as  Bauris  in 
Bengal,  are  in  Raj pu tana  called  both  Baorias  and  Mughias, 
and  derive  their  former  name  from  Baori  or  Bauli^  a  well, 
showing  tliat  they  are  descendants  of  the  race  who  consecrated 
the  well-shaped  sacrificial  hut  to  the  father-god  of  the  house- 
pole.^  Tins  name  Mughias  or  Mughas  takes  us  to  that  of 
the  Maglia(his  of  Behar,  the  subjects  of  the  mythic  king 
Jara-sandha,  the  legend  of  wliose  birth  I  have  have  already 
given.  It  is  they  who  were  the  foremost  race  whose  father- 
god  was  the  house-pole,  and  their  mother  the  household-fire, 
to  which  the  mother  of  the  family  offered  a  lilmtion  at  the 
festival  of  the  jotda  after  the  winter  solstice.^  I  have 
already  shown  how  they  entered  the  Pimjab  as  the  Takkas, 
and  tht'ir  progress  from  the  north-west  to  the  south-east, 
and  their  conquest  of  the  whole  of  Northern  India  according 
to  the  path  marked  on  the  altar  for  the  fire-mother.  UrvashT 
or  the  firc-altar  is  commemorated  in  the  legend  in  the  Sata- 
patha  Bnlhmana,  which  tells  how  Miithava,  the  god  who 
produces  fire  by  rubbing  {math)^  called  the  Vi-degha  or  he 
of  the  two  countries  (drffha),  carried  under  the  guidance  of 
Gotama  Raliu-gana,  the  priest  possessed  of  (ffafia)  Rahu 
the  life-giving  fire,  Agni  Vaisvfmara  the  household-fire,  from 
the  Sarasvati  to  the  banks  of  the  Sadanira  or  Gunduk.*  He 
there  instituted  the  animal  festival  to  Rilhu,  the  fire-god,  the 
ascending  node  of  the  moon.     This  is  still  celebrated  by  his 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.  p.   79. 
-  Hunter,  Gazetteer  of  India ^  vol.  xi.  p.  415,  s.v.  *  Rajputana. ' 
Lenormant,   Chatdcean  Magic y  chap.   xvi.   pp.  248,  249  ;    II.  J.   Wille, 
Beskriveise  over  Silicjords  Prastegield  i  oi<er  Teliemarken  i  Norge^  p.  243. 
■*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdk,  i.  4,  I,  14-17  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  105-106. 


ESSAY  III  201 

priests,  tlie  Dosadhs.  In  this  god  Ra-hu  we  find  the  begetter 
or  father-god,  Hu,  called  Ra,  the  creator,  Ra  being  the  god 
called  by  that  name  by  the  Egyptians.^  He  is  also  the 
Ra-ma  of  the  Hindus,  and  the  Ram  of  the  Jews,  whose 
name  appears  in  Abram,  and  in  Ram  the  father  of  the 
tribe  of  Judah.  The  date  of  the  feast  varies,  but  it  is 
clearly  regulated  by  the  different  times  at  which  the  official 
year  began,  and  this  shows  its  great  antiquity,  for  it  may 
be  celebrated  in  the  month  of  Magh,  the  witches'  month, 
when  the  Ooraon,  Munda,  and  Santal  year  begins,  in  that  of 
Aggahun,  the  month  of  the  winter  solstice,  when  the  lunar 
year  began,  in  Phagun,  to  coincide  with  the  solar  year,  or 
in  Baisakh,  to  agree  with  the  Gond  year.  Preparations  for 
it  must  be  made  on  the  fourth  or  ninth  of  these  months,  or 
on  what  was  evidently  the  original  date,  the  day  before  the 
full  moon,  which  was  looked  on  as  the  great  creator,  the 
creating  symbol  of  the  fire-god.  A  hut,  four  cubits  by  four, 
similar  to,  but  larger  than  that  of  the  Gond  Mu-Chandri 
sacrifice,  must  be  built,  with  the  door  facing  east,  and  in 
this  the  sacrificing  priest  must  sleep  the  night  before  the 
sacrifice,  on  a  bed  of  Kuslia  grass.  A  bamboo  platform, 
three  feet  high,  is  built  in  iront  of  the  door  of  the  hut,  and 
beyond  it  is  dug  a  trench  running  east  and  west,  six  cubits 
long,  and  a  span  and  a  (juarter  wide  and  deep,  and  fire 
places  are  made  at  the  north  of  the  trench.     Thus  the  hut, 

platform,  and  trench  stand  thus  \h\  [p]    |    t    |.      On  the  full 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Rdigioft  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  y^gypter^  p.  86,  derives 
Ra  from  ra,  to  give,  to  cause,  to  make,  and  the  name  thus  means  *  the  first 
cause.*  Thus  the  fire-god  Ra-hu  was  the  successor  of  the  Shu-hu,  or  the 
goat-father,  and  first  cause  of  life,  in  the  theology  of  the  fire- worshippers,  and 
this  is  the  belief  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  the  Egyptian  theology,  for  in  the 
list  of  the  great  creating  nine  gods  descended  from  Tum,  the  sun  of  the  dark 
night,  also  called  Ra,  his  first  children  are  Shu,  which  means  he  who  dries 
by  heating,  and  Taf-nit,  the  effluence  (H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie 
der  Alien  Aigypier,  p.  31,  573).  In  the  Book  of  the  Dead,  xvii.  22,  the 
first  children  of  Ra,  who  always  attend  Tum,  are  said  to  be  Hu  and  Su,  the 
Shu-hu  which  I  have  already  shown  to  be  the  primaeval  father  (H.  Brugsch, 
Religion  wtd  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^Egypter,  p.  219). 


202  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEVIES 

moon  day  the  trench  is  filled  with  mango  wood  soaked  in 
ghee^  and  two  vessels  full  of  boiling  milk  are  placed  close  to 
the  platform.  The  festival  begins  with  a  sacrifice  of  swine, 
a  ram,  wheaten  flour,  and  rice-milk  (khir\  which  are  eaten 
at  the  close  of  the  feast  by  the  worshippers,  and  washed 
down  by  enormous  quantities  of  ardent  spirits.  The  Dosadh 
priest,  before  he  has  eaten  and  drunk,  bathes  himself  on  the 
north  side  of  the  trench,  and  puts  on  a  new  cloth  dyed  Avith 
turmeric,  and,  going  to  the  trench,  worships  Rahu  on  both 
sides  of  it  with  mystic  formula?.  The  fire  is  then  kindled, 
and  the  Bhukut,  or  priest,  walks  three  times  round  it  with 
his  right  side  towards  it,  ending  at  the  east  end.  He  there 
meets  a  Brahmin,  who  walks  through  the  fire  before  him, 
and  the  Brahmin,  on  reaching  the  west  end,  stirs  the  milk 
to  see  that  it  has  been  properly  cooked.  The  inspired 
Bhukut,  after  walking  through  the  fire,  mounts  the  platform 
filled  with  the  spirit  of  Rahu,  and  chants  mystic  hymns, 
distributes  tulsi-leaves  for  the  healing  of  diseases,  and 
flowers  to  cure  barrenness  in  women,  and  this  is  followed  by 
the  tribal  feast,  which  ends  in  drunken  revelry.^  The  gods 
worshipped  by  the  Dosadhs  are — (1.)  The  son  of  Bhim-sen, 
a  reproduction  of  the  god  Rudra,  or  the  red  (rnd)  god  of 
the  Rig>'eda,  for  his  image  among  the  Gonds  is  either  a 
stick  covered  with  vermilion,  the  sacrificial  stake,  or  two 
sticks,  the  fire-sticks,  with  a  figure  in  front  of  them ;  (2.) 
Goraiya,  the  god  of  the  village  boundaries,  who  with  his 
two  wives,  the  goddess  Bun-di,  the  forest  {bun)  goddess  of 
the  uninhabited  waste,  and  Sokha,  the  witch  goddess,  the 
mother  Maga  of  the  village,  form  the  triad  worshipped  by 
most  of  the  lower  castes  in  Behar,  and  by  the  women  of  the 
dominant  caste  of  the  Babhans,  to  which  almost  all  the 
territorial  cliiefs  belong.-     These  fire  and  magic  worshippers, 

^  Rislcy,  Tribes  attd  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol,  i.  pp.  255,  256. 

-  Ibid,  s.v.  *  Amats,*  vol.  i.  p.  18  ;  *  Babhans,*  p.  33 :  *  Binds,'  p.  133  ; 
*  Dosadhs,'  p.  256  ;  *  Kandus,*  p.  416;  *Koiris,'  p.  504;  *Telis,'vol.  ii. 
p.  309. 


ESSAY  III  203 

who  originally  called  themselves   tlie  sons  of  the  mother- 
Maga,  though  an  inventive,  practical,  and  persevering  race, 
were  also  highly  excitable,  and  the  ever-present  feeling  that 
they  were  surrounded  with  countless  spirits,  the  ghosts  of 
forgotten  and  dead  races,  and  of  ancestors  and  enemies, 
who  were  always  ready  to  avenge  fancied  injuries,  added  to 
the  inherited  nervous  tension  of  the  race.     This  made  them 
look  on  the  attainment  of  a  state  of  spiritual  ecstasy,  which 
gave  them  insight  into  fresh  methods  of  conquering  their 
spiritual  foes,  as  the  highest  possible  human  bliss.     Accord- 
ing to  the  Finnic  creed,  each  man  had  in  him  from  his 
birth  a  part  of  the  divine  spirit,  and  it  was  by  freeing  this 
spirit  from  the  bonds  of  sense  that  he  became  like  the  gods. 
When,  after  attaining  a  state  of  increasing  transcendental 
ecstasy  (tuUu  tntoon\  he  passed  into  the  highest  stage,  his 
whole  being  became  identified  with   the  divine  soul  {tuUa 
haltiorhin)^  and   he  then  became  supreme  over  the  malefic 
forces,  and  identified  with  the  Fravashis  or  primaeval  mothers 
of  the  Zoroastrian  creed.^     They  were,  in  the  original  creed 
of  the  first  magic  races,  three  in  number,  the  three  goddesses 
of  the  three  seasons  of  the  year,  the  tliree  mothers  of  the 
United  races,  the  ruling  mothers  of  the  world  village,  the 
Saranyu   or  wind-goddesses   (sar)   of  Sanskrit   mythology, 
^ho  are  the  Noms  of  the  North,  and  the  Erinnyes  or  aveng- 
ing-goddesses   of  Greece.     As  time  passed    on  and    know- 
ledge accumulated,  the  classes  who  cultivated  these  gifts  of 
transcendental  ecstasy  became  a  separate  order,  who  diag- 
nosed diseases  and  were  able  by  the  inspiration  of  the  gods  to 
discern  the  right  remedy,  who  divined  the  future  and  gave 
advice  to  those  who   sought  for  guidance  in  complicated 
casesy  and  who,  like  the  Hindu  Devapi,  the  brother  of  the 
great  king  Shaihtanu,  had  received  from  Brihaspati  a  rain 
winning  voice.^    But  the  belief  in  the  creative  power  of  the 
divine  ecstasy  existed  long  before  the  special  class  of  magic 
priests  arose,  and  found  a  most  congenial  home  in  India, 

*  Lenormant,  ChaUaan  Magic,  p.  255.  *  Rigveda,  x.  9.  87. 


204  THE  RULING  KACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

where  the  seasonal  dances  of  the  matriarchal  races  were 
accompanied  by  an  enormous  consumption  of  intoxicating 
drink.  This  drink,  called  illi  by  the  IIos,  is  made  from 
rice  fermented  after  it  has  been  boiled,  and  the  receipt  for 
its  preparation  is  one  that  is  jealously  guarded  by  the 
women,  wlio  thus,  as  they  have  told  me,  were  able  to  decide 
when  their  husbands  should  be  allowed  to  be  drunk.  The 
Vahlikas,  the  people  of  the  sacred  fire  and  the  sacrificial 
stake,  when  they  made  their  way  into  the  Punjab,  found 
in  their  common  love  of  intoxicating  drink  a  passport  to 
their  union  with  the  village  races  of  India.  This  union 
produced  that  state  of  society  described  in  the  denunciations 
of  Karna  in  the  Mahtlbliarata,  which  I  have  already  quoted, 
and  it  is  similar  dances  to  these,  and  the  preparations  pre- 
ceding them,  which  arc  depicted  in  two  hymns  of  the 
Rigveda,  one  telling  us  how  Soma  was  made,  and  tlie  other 
giving  what  seems  to  be  a  reproduction  of  one  of  the  choral 
songs  sung  at  these  festal  meetings.  In  the  first  hymn 
Indra  is  called  on  to  drink  Soma  pressed  in  the  mortar,  in 
the  places  where  the  women  have,  like  the  Kol  women, 
learnt  the  art  of  preparing  it  with  a  manfha^  that  is,  with  a 
twirling  or  churning  rod,  and  where  the  Soma  mortar  is  in 
every  house,  in  short,  when  evervthiiiG:  is  made  ready  for  a 
Soma  feast.^  It  is  among  villages  where  every  one  is  pre- 
paring for  the  feast  that  at  the  time  of  the  Magh  festival 
of  the  Ho  Kols,  who  are  sun-worshippers,  young  men  and 
women  of  different  townships  go  round  successively  from 
village  to  village,  for  weeks  together,  drinking  and  dancing 
in  each,  and  singing  songs,  of  which  the  following  Vedic 
hymn,  written  by  a  bard  of  the  race  of  Priya-medhiis,  the 
beloved  {priya)  of  sacrifices  {medhas\  is  an  excellent  speci- 

^  Rigveda,  i.  28,  3,  4,  5.  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythologies  p.  15S, 
translates  v.  3  and  5  thus  : — *  Drink,  O  Indra,  greedily  the  Soma  pressed  out 
in  a  mortar  {ulukhala),  where  a  woman  is  employed  in  churning  it,*  and 
*  When  thou,  O  Ulukhalaka  (Soma-mortar)  art  engaged  in  movement  in 
every  house,  then  cry  aloud  like  the  drum  of  the  conqueror.* 


ESSAY  III  205 

men.  The  verses  in  the  lilting  Gayatri  metre  run  thus : — 
*  When  Indra,  the  rain-god,  and  I  go  to  the  place  of  the  red 
one  (RtuJy'a),  we  live  for  three  weeks  with  our  friends  drinking 
the  madhu  (intoxicating  spirits).  Sing  to  him,  sing  to  him, 
O  Priya  medhas,  cry  the  children,  (to  him)  who  is  dauntless 
as  a  tower.  The  cymbals  (gargara)  sound.  The  drums 
{godhd)  resound.  The  bow-string  {pwga)  twangs.  The 
creating  force  is  revealed  in  Indra  (Indrayu  Brahmo- 
dyutam).''^  The  state  of  excitement  accompanying  these 
dances  was  and  still  is  looked  on  bv  the  Dravidian  tribes 
as  religious  inspiration,  and  hence  Sura,  the  intoxicating 
drink  which  gave  both  to  men  and  gods  greater  mastery 
over  the  powers  of  nature,  was  always  largely  consumed  at 
all  religious  festivals.  Hence,  while  the  Rigveda  denounces 
drinking  in  many  passages,  as  in  that  which  says :  '  Indra 
finds  no  friends  among  the  rich  who  drink  Sura;'^  yet  in 
many  others  it  speaks  of  the  gods,  and  especially  the  older 
deities,  as  drinking  it.  Thus,  in  a  hymn  to  Indra,  Higveda, 
X.  131,  4,  5,  the  poet  says  to  the  Ashvins,  the  twin-stars  of 
Gemini, '  You,  O  Ashvins,  have  drunk  Soma  mixed  with  sura 
{snramam\  with  the  Ashura  Namuchi  (he  who  keeps  back 
rain)  ;  Indra  helped  you  with  his  deeds,  as  fathers  help  the 
son :  so  do  ye,  O  Ashvins,  help  Indra  with  your  wisdom,  as 
thou  (Indra),  the  skilled  one,  hast  drunk  the  mixed  Sura 

^  Rigveda,  viii.  58-(69),  7-9.  In  translating  this  passage  I  have  followed 
Grassmann's  translation  in  v.  7,  as  he  shows  that  the  hymn  refers  to  festivals 
lasting,  like  the  Ho  festivals,  some  weeks.  As  for  the  musical  instruments, 
the  names  are  translated  by  the  commentators  as  gargara^  harp,  godha^  harp, 
lute,  or  bowstrings,  and  pinga^  the  bow.  But  no  one  who  has  ever  seen  these 
dances  can  believe  these  renderings  to  be  correct.  As  for  pinga^  it  is  the 
bow,  but  not  the  bow  of  the  fiddler,  but  the  one-stringed  bow  with  the 
sounding  gourd  behind  it,  to  give  it  resonance,  which  is  played  by  the  Hos 
at  these  dances.  The  godha^  which  is  derived  from  gOy  cow,  and  which  some- 
times means  the  sinews,  cannot  mean  them  here,  but  must  mean  the  Dravidian 
drum,  which  is  always  beaten  at  these  dances,  while  the  gargara  mean  the 
cymbals,  which  arc  also  used,  and  are  the  bells  gargara  used  for  consecrating 
Pharsi  Pen. 

"  Rigveda,  viii.  21,  14. 


i 


206  THE  RULING  llACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEVIES 

{stiramam)^  the  Sarasvati,  O  Maghavaii,  hast  healed  thee 
{abhhnak)}    The  mention  of  the  Sarasvati  with  the  Ashvins 
and  Indra,  clearly  refers  to  the  Sautramani  sacrifice  to  these 
same  three  gods.     In  the  sacrifice  the  Ashvins  are  called  on, 
as  physicians  to  the  gods,  to  heal  Indra,  who  had  become 
drunk  witli  Soma  on  the  Sarasvati.     They  gave  him  Soma, 
made,  not  from  spirits,  but  from  the  shoots  of  young  grass 
(the  Kuslia  grass),  young  ears  of  com  and  roasted  com.^ 
This    festival,   called    by   Shankayana   an   Asura    festival, 
marks  the  coming  into  India  by  the  route  of  the  Sarasvati, 
the   Herat    river,  of   a  new    race    who    mixed   Sura    with 
Soma   or  water,  and   grew  corn.      This   is   again  referred 
to  in  another   hymn   of  the   Vashishtha   Mandala  to    the 
Sarasvati.      '  When    the   Purus    overcome   the    two   Soma 
plants  {andhafit)  on  thy  banks,  then  be  thou  as  the  friend 
of  the  Maruts,  good    to  us  (the   Vashishthas,   or  fire-wor 
shippers),  and   bring    us   the  good-will  of  Maghavan   (the 
son  of  Magha).*     These  two  Soma  plants  {andhaat)  are,  as 
we  are  told  in  the  Satapatha  Brahmana,  Soma  and  Sura, 
Soma  being  truth  and  light,  and  Sura  falsehood  and  dark- 
ness * ;  and  the  two  tells  us  of  the  beginning  of  the  age  of 
religious  duality,  the  contest  between  the  gods  of  the  age  of 
witchcraft,  called   Surapii,  the  drinkers  of  Sunl,  the  drink 
of  men,  and  the  gods  of  heaven,  called  Somapii,  the  drinkers 
of  Soma,  or  the  purer  drink  of  the  water  of  life ;  and  Soma 
and   Sura  are  called  man  and  wife.^     This  is  the  age   de- 
scribed in  Genesis  as  that  in  which  '  the  sons  of  God  saw  the 
daughters  of  men,  that  they  were  fair,  and  they  took  them 
wives  of  all  that  they  chose."*  ^     This  is  the  age  when  mar- 

^  Hillebrandt,  Vcdische  Mythologies  pp.  245,  246.  His  reading  of  the 
passage  is  clearly  one  more  consonant  with  historical  evidence  than  that  of 
Ludwii;.  -  Ibid.  p.  253,  254  ;  Sat.  Brdh.  xii.  8,  2,  3. 

*  Rigveda,  vii.  96,  2  ;    Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythologies  49,  50. 

^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah.  v.  i,  2,  10;  Hillebrandt,  Vedisclie  Mythologie^ 
p.  49,  50. 

^  Hillebrandt,   Vedische  Mythologie^  pp.  246,  254;   Tail,  Br&h.  i.  3,  3,  2. 

^  Gen.  vi.  2,  3. 


•^ 


ESSAY  III  207 

riage  by  capture  became  common.  The  union  between  the 
two  races  is  ctmspicuously  set  forth  in  tlie  Vaja-peya  sacri- 
fice.^ It  was  a  feast  to  deceased  ancestors,  like  the  Olympian 
games  of  Greece,  at  which  diariot  races  were  run.  It  opened 
with  the  purchase  of  2)nrlsruty  meaning  ripe  fruits  ;  these 
were  grass,  ears  of  corn,  and  roasted  com,  or  the  offerings 
substituted  by  the  Ashvins  at  the  Sautramani  sacrifice  for 
the  Sunl  which  made  Indra  drunk.  These  were  bought  for 
lead  by  the  Neslitri,  the  priest  of  Tvashtar,  and  the  female 
goddesses,^  the  gods  of  the  Takkas,  from  a  long-haired  man. 
The  roasted  corn,  or  j)arclied  barley,  is  the  offering  made  at 
the  Pitriyajfia  or  sacrifice  to  the  fathers,  to  the  Pitaro 
Barishadah,  or  the  fathers  wlio  sit  on  the  hiwhls  of  Kusha 
grass,  and  to  their  successors,  the  Pitaro  ""GnislivatUih, 
meaning  tliose  who  burn  their  dead.  These*  offerings  were 
made  after  the  rice  offered  to  the  earliest  class  of  fathers, 
thePitaral.i  Somavanial.i,  l)iul  been  given.^  It  was  instituted 
by  a  long-haired  race  ;  the  Northern  people  wlio  sold  or 
transmitted   the   ritual  to  their   successors.      The  Neshtri 

•       •  • 

brings  \}vq  pansrut  he  has  bouglit  through  the  west  door  of 
the  sacrificial  ground,  while  the  Vasa-tivari  water  for  mak- 
ing the  pure  Soma  is  brouglit  through  the  east,  and  he  cooks 
tlie  grain  and  the  Sura  on  the  south  fire,  placing  the  Sura 
cups  on  the  east,  while  the  Adhvaryu  makes  Soma  on  the 
west  of  the  Havirdhana  or  Soma  slied.  Seventeen  cups,  both 
of  Soma  and  Sura,  are  made  and  offered  together  on  the  axle 
of  the  Soma  cart  by  their  respective  priests,  the  Adhvaryu 
bolding  his  cups  high  over  the  axle,  and  the  Neshtri  his 
underneath  it,  with  the  words,  '  they  are  bound  tofjether.' 
Then  a  madhti-graha^  or  cup  of  mead,  was  given  by  the 

*  Sec  the  ritual  as  given  in  the  Katya yana^  xiv.  i,  i  ;  and  Sat.  Brdh,  v. 
4,  I,  2y  as  translated  by  Hillehrandt,  Vcdischc  Mythohgh^  pp.  247-249. 
The  number  seventeen  seems  to  show  that  this  ritual  belonged  to  the  age 
of  the  year  of  Orion,  when  time  was  reckoned  by  the  revolution  of  the  polar 
axis.     See  Essay  ii.  pp.  85,  86. 

'  Kigveda,  i.  15,  3  ;  ii.  36,  3;  Hillebrandt,  I'edische  Mytliologicy  p.  260,  261. 

'  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  ii.  6,  i,  4-6 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  421. 


208  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Adhvaryu,  and  the  sacrificer  to  a  man  of  the  Kshatriya  or 

Vaishya,  the  warrior,  or  the  trading  caste,  who  sits  on  the 

north  side  of  the  Vedi  to  receive  the  Sura  cups.    The  Neshtri 

goes  to  him  with  the  Sura  cups  and  gives  them  all  to  him 

in  exchange  for  the  madhu-graha^  saying,  as  he  takes  it  from 

him,  '  I  buy  from  thee  the  rncullm  cup/     This  he  takes  and 

gives   to    the    Brahman,   the    speaking   or   creating  (Jbri)^ 

priest,^  the  maker  of  mantras^  or  pregnant  sayings  wliich 

churn  out  {vianth)  ^  the  truth.     This  ritual,  when  compared 

with  that  of  the  Sautramani,  tells  us  of  the  coming  of  a  race 

led  by  the  Ashvins,  who  made  barley  their  sacred  grain, 

— Kusha  grass,  the  sign  of  their  descent  from  the  Kushitc 

race,  who  substituted  mead  as  the  sacred  drink  for  the  Sura 

of  their  predecessors,  and    who   looked   upon    the  bees  as 

sacred  and  inspired.    It  was  they  who  were  thought  to  have 

inspired  the  first  prophets,  as  is  shown  by  the  name  Deborah, 

the  speaking  bee,*  given  to  the  earliest  Jewish  prophetess,  by 

that  of  Me\£o-(7at,  or  bees,  given  to  the  nymphs  who  nursed 

the  young  Zeus  in  Crete,  and  to  the  priestesses  of  Demeter, 

the  barley  mother.^     This  belief  is  recorded  by  Virgil  in  the 

lines  : 

'  Esse  apibus  ]>ai*tcni  divinae  mentis  et  haustiis 
^Tlthereos  dixere/** 

The  belief  apparently  arose  from  the  use  of  mead  by  the 
Finns,  as  the  intoxicating  drink  used  to  inspire  the  magi- 
cians. This  race  of  mead  drinkers,  who  made  it  the  drink  of 
their  speaking  priests,  the  mystic  enchanters,  were  a  pastoral 
tribe  who  fed  their  cattle  on  the  Kusha  or  Durba  grass,  the 
short  grass  of  the  green  turf  growing,  not  in  the  swamps, 

^  The  root  bri  means  to  create. 

-  Hillebrandt,  Vcdi^chc  Myihologic^  p.  242  ;  Kat.  xiv.  4,  15, 

^  The  root  math  or  vianth^  to  twirl  or  churn. 

^  Gesenius,  Thei,aurus^  p.  318. 

®  Mannhardt  derives  Demeter  from  a  Cretan  word  deaiy  barley  ;  Frazcr, 
The  Golden  Dou^h^  vol.  i.  p.  331. 

**  De  Gubernatcs  Die  ThicrCy  German  translation,  chap.  iv.  pp.  506-50S  ; 
Virgil,  Georg.  iv.  220,  221. 


ESSAY  III  209 

but  in  well-watered  and  well-drained  land,  sloping  down  to 
the  river  banks. 

It  was  their  reverence  for  the  madhu  or  honey  drink 
which  made  them  call  the  fire-  and  boar-god  Vishnu  Ma- 
dhava,  or  born  of  mad/iu,  and  made  them  make  the  Mahua 
their  sacred  tree.  It  is  from  this  tree  that  the  drink  called 
mudhu  is  now  distilled,  but  probably  before  the  days  of  dis- 
tillation they  made  from  its  excessively  sweet  flowers,  a 
liquor  which  was  very  like  their  Northern  mead,  and  which, 
perhaps,  was  the  madhuparkay  or  lioney  drink,  ordered  by 
Manu  to  be  given  to  kings,  priests,  sons-  and  fatliers-in-law, 
and  maternal  uncles  paying  a  visit  a  full  year  after  their  last, 
and  this  is  especially  connected  with  sacrifices,  for  it  was  not 
to  be  given  to  a  king  or  priest  on  their  coming  if  no  sacrifice 
was  offered.^  It  is  to  the  Malma  tree  (Bassia  latifolia)  that 
the  husbands  are  first  married  among  the  Bagdis,  Bauris, 
and  Lobars ;  *  and  I  have  already  shown  the  close  connection 
between  the  Bauris,  Takkas,  and  fire- worshippers.  Among  the 
Kurmis,  Maliilis,  and  Raj  wars,  tlie  bride  is  married  to  a 
Mahua  tree,  and  her  liusband  to  a  Mango  tree,  while  the 
Santhals  marry  both  bride  and  bridegroom  to  a  Maliua  tree.^ 
But  the  most  significant  part  of  the  marriage  to  a  tree  is 
that  it  is  contracted  by  the  bride  circling  the  tree,  or  among 
the  Bagdis,  Bauris,  and  Lobars,  her  marriage  bower  of  sal- 
branches,  seven  times,  just  as  in  the  Brahman  wedding,  the 
bride  circles  her  husband  seven  times  in  the  ceremony  called 
Sat-pak,*  and  these  ceremonies  all  point  to  the  veneration  for 
the  number  seven  as  a  cardinal  tenet  of  the  race  of  fire- 
worshippers  who  made  their  father-god  the  house-pole,  allied 
themselves  to  the  sons  of  the  tree,  and  made  the  Mahua  or 
honey-tree  their  parent-tree.  These  were,  as  I  have  already 
shown,  a  race  of  cultivators,  to  whom  the  correct  computa- 
tion of  the  lapse  of  time  and  the  return  of  the  seasons  was  a 

^  BUhler,  Manu^  iii.  119,  120;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxv.  pp.  96,  97. 

-  Risley,  Tribes  and  CasUs  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.  pp.  39,  80 ;  vol.  ii.  p.  23. 

'  lind.  vol.  i.  p.  531  ;  vol.  ii.  pp.  40,  193,  229.  ^  Ibid,  vol.  i.  p.  150. 

14 


J 


210  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

matter  of  supreme  importance.  It  is  to  this  race  that  the 
birth  of  time  is  distinctly  traced  by  tlie  Vedic  poets  in  the 
myth  wliich  tells  of  the  union  of  Saranyu,  the  daughter  of 
Tvashtar,  the  god  of  the  Takkas  with  \'ivasvat,  who  was 
Bhrigu,  the  father  of  the  fire- worshippers,  for  both  are  said 
to  have  brought  fire  to  men  through  Matar-ishvan,  the  fire- 
socket.^  But  Saranyu,  Vivasvafs  bride,  had  two  forms,  like 
Leda,  the  Greek  mother  of  the  twins,  who  bore  a  mortal 
son,  Kastor,  and  an  immortal  Polydeukes.  As  the  immor- 
tal mother  she  bore  the  twin-gods  Yama,  and  as  the  mortal 
mother  the  heavenly  horsemen,  the  Ashvins.-  The  name 
Vivasvat  also  means  he  who  has  two  (ti)  forms  {vas)^  and 
the  whole  myth  which  tells  how  he  married  the  daughter  of 
the  creating-god  Tvashtar,  of  her  disappearance  when 
brought  home  to  earth,  and  her  reappearance  as  the  mother 
of  the  mortal  Ashvins,  tells  how  the  god  of  light,  the  pro- 
ducer of  the  heavenly  fire,  came  to  earth  to  teach  men 
heavenly  lore.  The  heavenly  twins  of  Saranyu,  called 
Ushasa-nakta,  the  dawn  (ushdsd\  and  night  (iiakta)^  arc  said 
to  form  Vivasvat'*s  day.^  They  are  also  called  the  two- 
formed  (vi-rupa)  daughter  of  the  red  one  (Tvashtar,  the  fire- 
god),  one  adorned  with  the  stars  and  the  other  holding  the 
sun."*  It  was  these  twin-mothers  who  bore  the  two  pairs  of 
twin-sons,  who  destroy  the  darkness,^  both  in  earth  and 
heaven,  and  who  bring  both  the  light  of  day  and  the  light 
of  knowledge,  and  unite  the  twin-stars,  the  Ashvins,  the 
leaders  of  the  stars  of  night  with  the  daughter  of  the  sun, 
who  travels  with  them  in  the  chariot  made  for  them  by  the 
Ilibhus,  the  guardians  of  the  seasons.®  The  twins  Yama,  as 
the  day  and  night,  are  said  to  have  spun  the  first  web  in 

^  Rigveda,  vi.  8,  4  ;  i.  60,  i.  Tvashtar  contains  the  root  tva,  meaning 
duality.  Thus  the  name  means  the  God  of  two,  that  is,  of  the  year  of  two 
seasons,  the  year  of  the  Pleiades  described  in  Essay  ii. 

-  Rigveda,  x.  17,  12. 

3  Ifitd.  vi.  49,  3  ;  Ilillebrandt's  Vedische  Mythologies  p.  503  note  i. 

*  Rigveda,  iii.  39,  3.  '  Ibid,  x.  39,  12  ;  vi.  63,  5. 

•  Ibid,  vii.  33,  9,  12. 


ESSAY  III  211 

which  men  clothed  themselves,^  the  Web  of  Time ;  and 
this  marks  the  story  of  the  birth  of  the  gods  of  time,  the 
successors  of  the  gods  of  generation,  as  first  told  by  the  race 
which  produced  the  first  weavers  and  artificers.  The  hymn  I 
have  just  quoted  gives  a  further  detail  as  to  the  growth  of 
the  conception  in  their  minds.  For  the  Vashishtha  or  most- 
creating  fire,  the  heavenly  twins,  which  is  the  subject  of  this 
hymn,  is  there  said  to  have  been  first  seen  by  Mitra-Varuna, 
the  moon-god,  and  the  god  of  the  dark  lieaven  of  night  and 
rain  (var)^  who  in  the  chronology  of  the  three  paridhh^  or  en- 
circling sticks,  were  the  gods  of  the  Northern  race  who  com- 
pleted the  figure  of  the  national  triangle.  Vashishtha  was 
seen  by  Mitra-Varuna  coming  forth  from  the  lightning,  *as 
Agastya  (the  star  Canopus)  brought  them  from  their  parent 
home,'  and  they  were  thus  the  sons,  the  stars  of  heaven,  led 
by  the  star  Canopus,  begotten  by  Mitra-Varuna,  from  their 
love  for  Ur-vashl.'  ^  This  brings  us  to  the  story  of  Pururavas 
and  Ur-vashl.  Pururavas,  the  Eastern  roarer,  the  thunder- 
god,  married  Ur-vashi  on  the  agreement  that  she  was  to  leave 
him  if  she  saw  him  naked.  When  revealed  to  her  by  the 
lightning-flash  sent  by  the  jealous  Gandharvas,  her  former 
mates,  to  whom  she  had  bom  two  lambs,  which  they  stole, 
he  lost  her.  He  only  found  her  after  long  wanderings, 
swimming  as  the  swan  or  wild-goose  {haiisa\  the  moon-bird 
in  the  lake  of  the  sacred  Plaksha-tree  {Ficu.9  infectoria)^ 
which  still  marks  the  great  place  of  pilgrimage  called  Puryag, 
at  the  junction  of  the  Jumna  and  Ganges.  She  there  first 
bore  to  Pururavas  a  son  called  Ayu,  meaning  the  swiftly 
moving  time,  the  constant  succession  of  day  and  night ;  but 
with  til  is  son  Urvashi  also  gave  to  Pururavas  the  sacred 
fire,  and  from  this,  where  he  left  it  in  the  forest,  grew  the 
Khadira-tree  {Acacia  catechu)^  and  the  Ashvattha-tree  {Ficu» 

*  Rigveda,  vii.  33,  10,  ii. 

*  See  story  of  Pururavas  and  Urvashi,  by  Geldner  ;  Pischel  and  Geldner, 
Vedische  Studien^  Stuttgardt,  vol.  i.  p.  243  ;  Sat,  Brdh,  xi.  5 1  ;  Harivamsoy 
1363  ;  Rigveda,  x.  95. 


212  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

reliffu)sa\  from  whence  the  sacred  fire  of  the  altar  was  en- 
gendered ;  ^  and  tliis  tells  us  of  the  institution  of  the  ritual 
of  burnt-ofterings  by  tlie  two  united  races,  the  sons  of  the 
fig-tree  and  those  of  the  Khadiratree,  which  yields  the 
catechu  dye  of  commerce,  and  was  thus  the  parent-tree  of  the 
weaving  and  dyeing  races.  It  was  they  also  who  added  tlie 
sciences  of  astrology  and  astronomy  to  the  magic  lore  of 
their  predecessors,  and  began  systematically  to  study  the 
stars. 

But  before  proceeding  further  with  this  inquiry,  we  must 
understand  clearly  tlie  meaning  of  Vivasvat  with  the  two 
forms,  and  of  his  house,  wliere  the  Ashvins  dwell  with  him.* 
This  last,  as  Hillebrandt  shows  from  several  passages  in  the 
Rigveda,  is  the  temple,  the  Sadas,  in  which  the  gods  as- 
semble, and  as  Indra  is  said  to  drink  with  the  Ribhus,  the 
guardians  of  the  seasons  in  the  sacrificer'*s  house,*  Vivasvat 
was,  as  the  Vedic  commentators  rightly  say,  thought  to  be 
the  sacrificer  of  the  gods.*  In  other  words,  he  was  the  god 
of  time,  wlio  offered  up  to  the  gods  each  day  and  night,  as 
they  passed  away,  and  marked  their  passage  by  the  course 
and  changes  of  the  stars,  moon,  and  sun.  The  two  forms 
which,  his  name  imply,  were  originally  the  creative  and  re- 
ceptive forms,  marked  in  the  Greek  conception  of  the 
liermaphrodite  gods  bom  of  Hermes,  tlie  universal  father, 
and  Aphrodite,  the  universal  mother ;  but  tliis  materialistic 
conception  was  changed  when  life  was  seen  to  arise  from  the 
union  of  the  goddess  of  the  day  and  night  with  the  creating 
lieat  and  the  design  of  the  creator.  The  creating  fatlier 
then  became  Manu,  the  Indian  thinker,  whose  earlier  form 
was  the  Phrygian  god  Men,  Minos,or  Menes,the  measurer;  and 
the  mother  of  his  sons  was  Ida,  the  sheep,  the  mother  of  the 
golden  fleece,  the  stars  of  heaven  and  of  the  shepherd  race. 
She  was,  in  Indian  genealogy,  the  mother  of  Puru-ravas,  the 
Eastern  thunder-god,  wlio  by  his  will  produced  the  fire  of 

>  Rig\-eda,  i.  46,  13.  ^  7^/^,  i  ^^^^  ,^  m  ^^  y^  ^   y^^  ,^ 

'  fdui,  iii.  60,  5.  *  Hillebrandt*s  Vedische  Mythologies  pp.  476,  477. 


ESSAY  III  213 

life,  tlie  lightning  flash  which  gave  to  the  water  enclosed  in 
the  clouds  its  generative  force.  It  was  she  who,  when  born 
from  the  thought  of  Manu,  became  the  mother  of  the  sons 
of  Ida  or  Ira,  who  gave  lier  name  to  the  Indian  rivers,  which 
water  the  ancient  empire  of  the  Kushika,  the  Iravati  or 
Ravi,  in  the  Punjab,  the  Iravati  or  Rapti,  in  Oude,  and  the 
Iravati  or  Ira-waddi,  in  Burmah.  She  was  the  mother  of 
the  race  bom  on  the  rivers,  and  the  sons  of  the  god  of 
storms ;  and  this  brings  us  to  the  story  of  the  birth  of  the 
two  ancient  storm-twins,  the  Brancliian  or  Lycian  Apollo, 
and  his  sister  Artemis,  and  to  that  of  the  god  Hari  in 
India,  whose  name  means  the  yellow,  and  also,  like  that  of 
Ravas,  the  roarer.^  The  Har  in  Har-i,  again,  is  the  same 
word  as  the  Khnr  in  the  Akkadian  Khar-sak-kurra,  which 
means  both  entrails  and  a  bull ;  and  this  bull  is  the  god 
Pushan,  who,  after  the  tranformation  which  made  him,  as  I 
shall  show,  the  alligator,  became  the  bull-god,  and  both  as 
the  alligator  and  bull  he  was  the  god  of  the  black  cloud 
who  took  the  place  of  the  boar-god.  Leto  meaning  '  the 
hidden,**  that  is,  the  disappearing  Saranyu  of  the  Rigveda, 
was,  when  near  the  time  of  her  labour,  led  by  wolves  to  the 
Xanthus,  meaning  the  *  yellow '  river,  in  Lycia,  the  land  of 
wolves  {\vKo<;\  and  there,  in  the  sacred  grove  of  the  mother- 
tree,  sixty  stadia  from  the  town  of  Xanthus,  she  bore 
Apollo,  whose  name  means  the  protector ;  and  Artemis,  who 
became  afterward  the  moon-goddess,  but  who  was,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  vi.,  the  mother-stars  of  the  bear  race,  the  constel- 
lation of  the  Great  Bear.  They  were  the  twin-parents  of 
the  yellow  race ;  and  as  in  the  Delos  form  of  this  legend, 
Leto  is  said  to  be  a  wolf,  and  Apollo  was  represented  as  a 
wolf,  both  in  Argos  and  Delphi,  in  which  latter  place  he 
guarded  the  treasure  of  the  god,  they  are  the  children  of 
the  wolf-mother,  the  day  and  night.^     It  is  this  same  wolf- 

^  Curtius,  Griechische  Etymologie^  p.  592,  No.  185,  p.  198. 

*  Miiller,  Die  Dorter ^  book  ii.  chap.  ii.  §  2,  p.  218,  l>ook  ii.  chap.  vi.  §  8, 

P^  305»  306. 


214  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

goddess,  the  mother  of  light  {luk\  whom  we  find  in  the 
Rigveda  calling  to  her  aid  the  Ashvins,  *  skilled  in  cattle,^ 
to  restore  the  sight  of  her  husband,  Rijr-ashva,  the  upright 
{Rijr)  horse  (ashva)^  or  the  house-pole,  who  had  been  blinded 
by  his  father,  the  fire-god,  and  who  had  in  vain  sacrificed  a 
hundred  and  one  rams,^  and  it  was  the  Ashvins  who  saved 
Vartika,  the  quail,  the  bird  of  the  dawn,  from  tlie  wrath  of 
the  wolf-goddess.-  Their  Indian  counterpart,  Hari,  the 
Indian  yellow  storm-god,  was  boni  at  Mathura,  or  the  river 
Yamuna,  meaning  the  binding  (j/am)  river,  the  river  of  the 
twins  {yama\  wliicli  united  the  Eastern  and  Western  races 
of  India,  whose  sacred  meeting-place  was  the  birthplace  of 
Ayu,  the  son  of  Ur-vashi,  at  Puryag,  where  it  joins  the 
Ganges.  We  find  the  place  of  his  birth  marked  for  us,  not 
only  by  the  universal  tradition  recorded  in  the  Puranas,  but 
also  in  a  passage  in  the  Rigveda,^  which  tells  how  Abliya- 
vartin  Chayamana,  the  Srinjaya  or  son  of  the  sickle  {srini)^ 
also  called  Parthava,  or  son  of  Prithu,  the  mother-earth  *  of 
the  Dravidian  races,  defeated  the  Vrishivants  and  Turvashu 

7  •       •  • 

at  Hari-yuplya,  and  drowned  three  thousand  of  them  in  the 
Yav-yavati,  meaning  the  river  of  the  young  dawn-god  {ydvati\ 
and  also  of  the  people  who  sowed  the  plant  of  the  dawn, 
yava  or  barley.^  Here  Hari-yuplya,  which  means  the  place 
of  the  sacrificial  stakes  iyiipa)  of  Hari  must  be  the  town  of 
Mathura,  the  shrine  of  the  fire-drill  (math),  where  the  god 

^  Rigveda,  i.  Ii6,  i6,  117,  17,  18.  '-^  //'/</.  i.  116,  14;  117,  16. 

3  /did,  vi.  27,  5-8. 

*  The  root  /^r//,  from  which  Prithu  as  well  as  the  Latin /anV,  to  conceive, 
to  bear,  is  derived,  is  a  Tamil  root.  It  appears  in  the  Kigveda,  x.  36,  8,  in 
the  phrase  *  apam  peruh,'  a  name  given  to  Soma,  meaning  *  the  seed  or  germ 
(of  life)  in  the  waters.'  Peru  means,  as  Pischel  and  Geldner  show,  'swelling 
or  making  to  swell,'  and  thence  seed  or  germ  :  Pischel  and  Geldner,  Vediscke 
Sttidieny  vol.  i.  pp.  81-91.  Prithu,  whose  name  comes  from  a  Dravidian 
root,  and  who  is  the  mother  of  the  Pandavas,  is  the  mother  of  the  Dravidian 
races. 

^  Curtius,  Griechische  Elymologiey  No.  568,  p.  378,  No.  660,  p.  397 ; 
also  p.  588.  The  root  yah  appears  in  the  Greek  ?ws,  dawn,  the  Latin 
juvenuSi  and  the  Sanskrit  jJz/aw,  young. 


ESSAY  III  215 

Hari  has  always  been  especially  worsliipped.  It  was  here 
that  the  yellow  race,  led  by  their  guiding  stars,  the  Ashvins, 
must  have  made  their  first  capital ;  and  it  was,  as  I  shall 
presently  show,  down  the  Jumna,  that  they  made  their  way 
into  India.  But  the  wolf-myth  which  they  brought  with  them 
must  have  come  from  the  North,  where  the  wolf-goddess 
{XvKTf)  was  the  goddess  of  light  (\vKr}\  whereas  the  San- 
skrit wolf  vrika  means  the  destroyer  or  tearer ;  and  the  two 
names  show  the  distinction  between  the  Northern  races,  who 
looked  on  the  light  and  the  sun  as  the  giver  of  life,  and  the 
races  of  South-western  Asia,  to  whom  the  summer  sun  was 
the  destroyer  and  god  of  death.  It  was  this  wolf-race 
which  first  brought  barley  to  India,  for  it  was  the  Ashvins 
who  first  sowed  barley  with  the  plough,  called  in  this 
passage  Vrika,  the  wolf.^  But  these  people  who  worshipped 
the  twin-gods  Artemis,  the  moon-goddess,  or  Mitra,  and  the 
protecting  and  destroying  god  Apollo,  Hari-Varuna,  who 
difiiised  pestilence  or  plenty  by  the  arrows  or  rain-showers 
shot  from  his  silver  bow,  were  also  those  whose  tribal  totems 
were  the  sheep  and  the  ram,  and  we  can  trace  the  growth  of 
the  whole  series  of  myths  I  have  just  cited  in  the  various 
forms  of  the  Sanskrit  Saranyu,  the  mother  of  the  twins 
Yama.  This  name  is  reproduced  in  that  of  the  Greek 
Erinnyes,  the  three  goddesses,  with  serpents  in  their  hair,  who 
Wreak  vengeance  on  all  who  have  disobeyed  their  parents, 
were  disrespectful  to  the  old,  and  been  guilty  of  perjury, 
murder,  inhospitality,  and  have  ill-treated  suppliants.^  To 
them  black  sheep  and  nephalia  or  honey  and  water  were 
offered.  These  three  goddesses  are  united  into  one  as 
Hecate,  whose  worship  I  have  compared  with  that  of  the 
Rudra  Triambaka,  and  also  with  that  of  the  Gond  Phai-si 
Pen.  Hecate  was  the  goddess  of  witchcraft,  with  three 
bodies  and  four  hands,  holding  the  key  of  knowledge,  the 
snake,  the  torch,  and  the  sacrificial  knife,  and  to  her,  as  to 

*  Kigvcda,  i.  117,  21.     The  word  used  is  vrikena, 
'  Smith,  Classical  Dictionary^  %,v.  *  Erinnyes.* 


216  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  Erinnyes,  black  female  lambs  and  honey  were  oflere(J, 
with  the  addition  of  dogs.^  She  was  also  the  attendant  of 
Persephone,  the  daughter  of  Demeter,  the  barley-mother, 
who  disappears  yearly  for  her  winter  sleep,  and  she  is  thus  a 
year-goddess,  who  rules  the  changes  of  tlie  three  seasons 
which  make  up  the  year  of  the  Ashvins.  Both  the  Erinnyes 
and  Hecate  are  goddesses  of  those  sons  of  the  mother  Maga, 
whose  totem  was  the  black  slieep  sacred  to  the  god  of  night 
and  storm,  the  Greek  Ouranos,  the  Sanskrit  Varuna,  and  in 
giving  them  the  name  Saranyu  or  Sarana,  which  means  the 
hurrying  or  swiftly  flowing  one,  the  original  idea  seems  to 
have  been  that  slie  was  the  rain-mother,  or  the  mother  from 
whom,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  myth  of  Gandhari  and  her  sons, 
tlie  hundred  (Hekate)  children  of  the  holy  race  were  to  be  born. 
But  the  Sanskrit  Sar-ana,  or  the  god  (a?ia)  Sar,  was  not  the 
earliest  form  of  this  goddess,  for  she  was  the  Phrygian  god- 
dess Shari,  worshipped  by  the  Armenians  on  Lake  Van.* 
She  became  to  the  Akkadians  the  god  Ana-sar  or  Sar-ana, 
the  god  {ana)  of  Sar,  the  upper  firmament,  the  father-goti, 
who,  uniting  with  Ana  ki-sar,  the  goddess  of  the  earth, 
created  the  present  world.  This  bisexual  deity,  the  heaven 
and  the  earth  made  pregnant  by  the  rain,  was  the  god  to 
whom  the  great  temple  of  I-sarra,  the  house  (/)  of  Sar  wjis 
dedicated  ;  and  their  son  was  Adar,  the  fire-god,  tlie  Atar  or 
Atri  of  the  Rigveda,  which  latter  name  is,  according  to 
Grassmann,  derived  from  aJ,  to  eat,  and  tri,  three,  and  thus 
means  '  the  devouring  three,**  the  tliree  seasons  of  the  years 
of  time.  The  ideogram  for  Sar,  a  measure,  and  the  god 
As-sor  -^  and  0<  are  the  same,  and  so  is  tliat  for  Sar, 
heaven,  and  tlie  air-god  ^  >ff.  This  last  is  composed 
of  two  elements,  Sar  -^  and  4f  wing,  so  that  the  wind- 
god  was  called  '  tlie  wings  of  Sar,*"  who  thus,  like  the  god 
Yah    of  the  Psalmist,  *came  flying  on    the  wings  of  the 

*  Smith,  Classical  Dictionary y  s.v.  *  Hecate* 

-  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,   Lect.    iv.    p.   265  note  I  ;    Lect.   ii, 
p.  125. 


ESSAY  III  217 

wind.**  The  elements  Sar  also  appears  in  the  ideogram 
of  Ahi,  the  divine  snake,  ^  >-»-y  or  the  god  *-^\  of 
the  measuring  heaven  ^  }  The  root  word  and  idea  Sar 
also  appears  in  Greek  and  Lycian  mythology  in  the  god 
Sarpedon,  from  Sar,  the  root  of  aapoto^  to  sweep,  whose 
name  means  the  cleansing  god.  He  was  the  third  in  the 
divine  triad  of  the  sons  of  Europa,  the  mother  riding  on 
the  bull  Minos,  the  measurer,  Rhado-manthus  or  Rhabdo* 
manthus,  the  judge  who  judges  with  the  twirling  or  revolv- 
ing {manthu)  magic-rod  {Rhabdos\  and  Sarpedon,  the 
cleanser.  These  gods  mark  the  process  of  evolutionary 
idealisation,  by  which  the  measuring-god  was  first  wor- 
shipped by  those  people  whose  god  and  judge  worked 
miracles  by  the  rod  of  the  magician,  the  first  prastara  or 
baresma,  and  afterwards  by  a  higher  race,  whose  god  framed 
the  unalterable  laws  of  Nature,  and  established  a  moral  law 
for  the  guidance  of  his  worshippers.  These  people  believed 
in  the  cleansing  efficacy  of  holy  water  sprinkled  on  the  altar 
and  the  worshippers  with  the  bundle  of  cleansing  grass  or 
twigs,  the  second  prastara^  as  opposed  to  the  blood 
sprinklings  of  the  older  worship ;  and  it  was  they  who  intro- 
duced the  old  Northern  custom  of  infant  baptism,  in  which 
the  father  acknowledged  the  child  by  sprinkling  it  with 
water  and  giving  it  a  name,^  a  custom  followed  by  Leto, 
who  baptized  the  young  Apollo  and  Artemis  in  the  holy 
river  Xanthus;^  and  these  children  who  rose  to  heaven 
purified  from  sin  by  the  cleansing  waters  of  the  mother- 
river  of  the  yellow  race  became  the  Mitra-Varuna  of  Hindu 
mythology,  whose  children  were  the  stars  led  by  Agastya 
(Canopus),  the  moon-god  and  the  god  of  heaven,  Varuna, 
whose  victims  were  the  ewes  and  rams,  the  totems  of  his 
human  children,  sacrificed  both  to  him  and  the  mother- 
goddess     Saranyu,     and     whose     food    was     the     barley 

*  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  4,  222,  414,  415,  417. 
"^  Mannhardt,  Germanische  Mythen^  1858,  p.  312. 
'  Miiller,  Die  Dorier^  book  ii.,  chap.  ii.  p.  218. 


^18  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

which  was  Varuna'*s  com.^  It  was  the  gods  of  the 
sons  of  Sarasvati,  the  river  issuing  from  the  lake  (Saras) 
of  living  or  flowing  water  (*SW),  the  river  of  the  goddess 
Sari,  who  became  the  Hindu  god  Hari.  But  this  abstract 
theology  could  only  have  been  thought  out  by  a  leisured 
class,  whose  presence  proves  a  very  considerable  advance  in 
civilisation  and  wealth,  a  class  of  thinkers  who  devoted  their 
minds  to  the  solution  of  the  problems  of  the  origin  of  life, 
birth,  creation,  production  and  reproduction,  of  the  changes 
marked  by  the  recurring  seasons  of  the  year  and  the  ap- 
parently arbitrary  outbreaks  of  storms,  floods,  pestilences,  and 
famines,  and  it  was  from  their  teaching  that  the  new  theology 
arose.  In  this  creed  the  revealed  god  was  Minos,  the  mea- 
surer, or  Manu,  the  thinker,  the  inspired  teacher  who  traced 
out  the  laws  laid  down  by  the  hidden  and  unseen  god,  the 
creator  and  giver  of  life,  the  Sar  who  enclosed  within  himself 
the  Su,  or  essence  of  life  which  was  distributed  through  the 
world  by  the  lightning  which  made  the  rain-cloud,  the 
creating-mother,  and  the  living  thoughts  of  the  inspired 
thinker.  The  revelations  received  by  this  prophet  Apollo 
Loxias,  or  son  of  the  wolf  of  light,  called  Ato?  irpo^rjTri^ 
irarpo^^  the  expounder  (of  the  will)  of  the  father  of  the  bright 
sky,  were  announced  to  men  by  the  judge  Rhabdo-manthus, 
the  judge  or  Danu  of  the  Zendavesta,  Rigveda,  and  Malia- 
bharabi,  called  also,  in  the  Zendavesta,  Urvakshaya  the 
ancient  {iir)  speaker  (vak\sh),^  the  father  Dan  of  the  Jews, 
and  of  the  races  called  Diinava  by  the  Hindus,  and  Danaoi 
by  the  Greeks,  the  Aaron,  or  chest  of  the  law,^  the  Ashi 
Vanguhi  or  encircling  snake  {Ashi\  another  form  of  Echis 
or  Ahi,  who  is  also  the  Chesti  and  Chesta  of  the  Din,  or  law 
of  god  of  the  Zendavesta.*   This  was  the  age  of  the  prophets 

^  Eggeling,  SaL  Brdh.  ii.  5,  21,  14-16;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  391,  396. 

'^  Mill,  Yastia,  ix.  10;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  p.  234. 

•'  Gesenius,  ThesauntSy  p.  147.  Aaron  is  the  name  for  the  Ark  in  Exodus 
XXV.  22,  xxvi.  33. 

"•  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Ashi  Vasf,  61.  Sirozah^  L  24,  25.  Mill, 
Yastia,  iii.  16;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  282,  10,  11  ;  vol.  xxxi.  p.  21 1. 


ESSAY  III  219 

aiid  prophetesses — Aaron  the  speaker,  Miriam  the  bold 
speaker,^  and  Deborah  the  speaking  bee,  the  Jewish  counter- 
parts of  the  prophetesses  of  the  Delphic  oracle.  It  was  under 
the  guidance  of  the  judge  Danu  and  the  inspired  priests  that 
they  went  soutliward  from  tlie  hilly  country  of  Asia  Minor, 
seeking  out  in  their  progress  well-draincJ  and  gently-sloping 
valleys  suited  for  their  crops  of  corn,  and  for  the  growth  of  the 
nourishing  and  succulent  short  grass  on  which  they  could 
best  feed  their  sheep.  It  was  in  these  pleasant  valleys  that 
ithey  founded  permanent  villages  formed  of  united  house- 
holders, where  each  house  was  ruled  by  the  house-mother 
and  house-fatlier,  whose  father-gods  were  Varuna  and  Aslii- 
Vanguhi,  the  god  and  goddess  of  conjugal  unioUj^the  mysteri- 
ous and  conjoined  beings  whose  home  was  in  the  air,  and 
whose  divine  power  was  not  confined  to  the  area  of  the 
village  or  the  guardiansliip  of  the  family  or  tribe,  but  who 
were  the  parents  of  the  whole  human  race  and  of  all  living 
beings.  It  is  the  history  of  this  emigration,  which  ended  in 
the  occupation  of  the  Euphrates  valley,  which  we  find  in  the 
name  and  mythic  history  of  Sar-ganu,  or  he  who  is  possessed, 
(with  the  spirit)  of  Sar,  the  Serug  of  the  Bible,  who  was  the 
fatlier  of  Nahor,  the  river  i'-uplirates,  and  the  grandfather 
of  Terali  or  Dara  the  antelope.^  His  name  means  also  the 
Sar,  or  waterer  of  the  enclosure  (ganu\  and  the  story  of  his 
birth  is  one  that  has  been  appropriated  by  the  great  §argon, 
tlie  historical  king  of  Assyria,  who  ruled  at  a  much  later 
period,  3750  b.c,  and  by  the  mythic  heroes  who  substituted 
the  worship  of  the  gods  of  heaven  for  the  gods  of  earth, 
Moses,  the  Egyptian  Horus,*  and  Kavad,  tlie  founder  of  the 
Kushite  race,^  for,  like  them,  he  was  born  in  a  secret  place 
among  the  reeds  on  the  river  bank,  where  he  was  found  by 

'  Gesenius,  Thesaurus ^  pp.  318,  819;  s.v.  *  Miriam  and  Deborah.* 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  ii.  5.  2.  23.     Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Ashi  Ya^ty 
5- 1 5-  54-59;  S.B.K.  vol.  xii.  p.  398,  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  271-274,  280-282. 

'  Gen.  xi.  21-23. 

*  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mylkologie  der  Alten  ^gypter^  p.  392. 

*  West,  Bundahish,  xxxi.  24;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  p.  136. 


jeaO  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

his  future  protector,  who  raised  him  to  greatness, — Sar-ganu 
is  said  to  have  been  found  by  Akki  the  irrigator,  who  made 
him  his  gardener,  and  called  him  by  the  Akkadian  name  of 
Si-Shig-Shig  or  Si-Shim-shim,  he  who  makes  all  things  green. 
He  thus  became  the  father-god  of  the  Akkadians,  the  lover  of 
Ist«r,  the  god  Sar  or  Sar-sar,^  the  Sar-rabu,  or  great  Sar,  of  the 
Phoenicians.^  He,  as  the  great  irrigator,  was  the  father  of  the 
Kurmis,  the  irrigating  and  farming  races  of  India,  who  take 
their  name  from  Kur,  the  tortoise.  We  thus  see  in  the 
advent  of  this  race  of  shepherds  and  skilled  irrigators  to  the 


onr»f, 


The  ancient  geographers  looked  on  the  Euphrates  and  Oxus  as  going 

through  the  Caspian  Sea. 

land  of  the  mother-mountain  the  final  completion  of  the 
figure  of  the  tortoise,  to  which  the  ancient  cosmographers- 
compared  the  cultivated  earth,  the  figure  of  which  had  been 
roughly  sketched  on  the  fire-altar.  But  the  more  elaborate 
figure,  which  represented  the  completion  of  the  idea,  was 
formed,  not  from  dividing  one  triangle  into  segments,  but  by 
the  union  of  the  four  triangles  representing  the  South- 
eastern and  North-western  races,  who  all  looked  on  the 
mother-mountain  of  the  East,  whence  Indra  gets  the  rain,  as 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  pp.  26  note  I,  27 ;  Lect.  iv^ 
pp.  247  note  I,  265  note  i.  ^  Ibid,  Lect.  iii.  p.  196  note  i. 


ESSAY  III  221 

their  national  birthplace,  where  they  became  united  as  the 
Kushite  race,  the  confederation  of  civilised  man. 

The  tortoise  thus  formed  and  depicted  on  page  220  repre- 
sents the  Greek  cross  and  the  double  dorje  or  thunderbolt  of 
Vishnu  and  Indra,  and  also  a  map  of  the  Indian  races,  the 
sons  of  the  Northern  Ira  or  Ida,  Maga,  Gauri,  the  Grond  cow- 
mother  and  the  mother  of  the  Dravidian  matriarchal  races, 
the  sons  of  tree-goddesses,  as  distributed  at  the  time  of  the 
union.     It  also  forms,  with  spaces  left  open  for  the  parent 
rivers,  the  Euphrates,  Sindhu  or  Indus,  Yamuna  or  Jumna, 
and  Gun-gu  or  Ganges,  which  watered  the  garden  of  God, 
SLn   octahedron   or  eight-sided  figure,  the  figure  sacred  to 
-Agni  the  fire-god,  and    the   angles  of  the  tribal  triangles 

form   the   Svastika  •C*  while  the  whole  forms  the  figure 
c^f  the  Yupa  or  sacrificial  stake  on  which  the  sacrifice  of 
^nan,  said  in  the  Brahmanas  to  be  the  true  sacrifice,^  is  con- 
tinually offered  up  to  the  gods,  and  these  human  sacrifices 
Aiere  not,  in  the  theology  of  the  star-woi-shippers,   merely 
symbolical,  but  were,  as  I  shall  show,  actually  offered  by 
"them.     This  Svastika  is  the  sign  of  the  fire-god  placed  in 
"the  image  of  the  mother-altar  found  at  Troy,  and  the  proto- 
type of  the  gamma  cross    »-J-«,  used   as   the  sign   of  good 
fortune  and  divinity  by  the  Greeks,  Etruscans,  Latins,  Gauls, 
Grermans,  Bretons,  and   Scandinavians   in   Europe,  by  the 
people  of  Asia  Minor,  Caucasus,  Persia,  India,  China,  and 
Japan  in   Asia,  and  placed  on  the  breasts  of  Buddha  and 
Apollo,*  and  it  is   the  repetition  or  reduplication  of  the 
Svastika  which  forms  the  figure.     The  rulers  of  the  tortoise 
earth  were  the  sons  of  Ida  or  Ira,  the  sheep-mother,  who  were 
led  to  empire  by  the  shepherd-god,  the  Akkadian  Sib  or 
Shiba.     The  ideogram  rif^  f^  denoting  this  shepherd-god, 
who  became  the  god  Shiba  or  Shiva  of  the  Hindus,  is  com- 

1  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  i.  3.  2i,  says  Man  is  the  sacrifice ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii. 
p.  78.    This  is  repeated,  iii.  5.  3.  i,  vol.  xxvi.  p.  126. 

'  La  Miration  des  SymboUsy  by  Comte  Gobert  d*  Alviella,  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondesy  ist  March  1891,  p.  131. 


222  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TBIES 

posed  of  two  elements  ^  meaning  wing  or  sceptre,  the  goat- 
lieaded  staff,  the  emblem  of  kingly  dignity  and  magic  power 
borne  by  the  Egyptian  Osiris,  and  JgJ,  meaning  flocks^ 
sheep,^  so  that  he  was  the  shepherd  king.  He  is  called,  in 
the  Mahabharata,  Shiva  the  son  of  Ushi-nara,  that  is,  the 
father  man  (nara)  of  the  East,  Ushi,  or  the  father-god  Puru- 
ravas.  The  people  called  Ushi  nara  are  mentioned  in  the 
Rig\'eda  ;^  and  the  Shiva  are  one  of  the  tribes  conquered  by 
the  Tritsu  in  the  battle  of  the  Ten  Kings.^  Tliey  are  the 
Seboi,  placed  by  Strabo  on  the  Indus  north  of  the  Chinab,  the 
country  of  the  Kam-bhoj&s ;  and  they  are  named  among  the 
princi[)al  allies  of  Jagadratha,  king  of  Sindhu,  in  the  rape  of 
Drupadi  in  the  Mahabharata.*  It  was  their  king,  called 
Sophy tes  or  Sopeithes,  who  gave  Alexander  the  Great  a  pre- 
sent of  fighting  dogs,  and  they  are  the  race  called  by  Pliny 
the  Abhiria,  who  ruled  the  land  of  Kutch,  the  delta  of  the 
Indus.*  They  are  still  known  in  India  as  the  Ahirs,  or  sons  of 
Ahi,  the  snake,  who  in  Bengal  are  distinguished  both  as  cattle 
herdsmen  and  as  professional  fighters  with  the  long  bamboo 
pole — our  quarter-staff.  It  is  in  this  capacity  that  they  are 
much  sought  after  as  retainers  by  those  who  look  for  men 
who  can  be  trusted  to  guard  their  master^  property  or  to 
attack  that  of  his  neighbours.  The  progress  through  India 
of  the  first  detachment  of  these  people,  who  grew  millets,  but 
had  not  yet  learned  to  grow  barley,  is  best  told  in  the  third, 
fourth,  and  fifth  cantos  of  the  Gond  Sorig  ofLingal,  These 
tell  how  Liiigal,  after  he  had  been  slain  by  the  confederacy 
I  have  already  spoken  of,  formed  by  the  union  of  the  matri- 
archal tribes  with  the  first  shepherds,  the  sons  of  the  goat, 
and  the  cultivators  of  rice,  was  restored  to  life  by  the  Amrita, 
or  water  of  life,  given  to  him  by  Kirtao  Sabal,  the  messenger 
of  the  gods.     He  asked  Mahadeo  for  a  new  race  of  Gonds, 

J  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  222,  237,  484. 
^  Rigveda,  x.  59,  10.  ^  Ibid,  vii.  18,  7. 

*  Vana  {Draupadi  harana)  Parva,  cclxiv.  p.  782. 
•''  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  0/ India,  pp.  157,  158. 


ESSAY  III  223 

1)0  were  to  bring  law  and  order  into  the  land,  but  Mahadeo 
^'^^fiised  to  release  them  from  the  mother-mountain  till  he 
*^xought  him  the  eggs  of  the  black  Bindo  bird.  He  went  to 
e  sea  to  seek  them,  but  found  them  watched  by  the  serpent 
hour-nag,  the  snake  of  the  burning  sun  of  summer,  who  had 
Jready  killed  seven  broods.  Lingal  slew  the  snake,  as 
"Jhraetaona  slew  Azi  Dahaka,  and  cut  it  in  seven  pieces, 
%!%hich  he  kept.  The  mother-bird  took  him  on  one  of  her 
"Curings,  and  her  young  on  the  other,  and  bore  them  to  the 
Dhewala-giri  mountain  at  the  sources  of  the  Jumna,  while 
'^he  father-bird,  flying  over  them,  shaded  them  with  his  wings 
*om  the  sun.  When  Lingal  came  with  the  bird  of  the 
south-west  monsoon,  who  brings  the  rain,  and  the  seven 
pieces  of  the  snake,  forming  the  seven  days  on  which  the 
reckoning  of  time  was  based,  Mahadeo  released  the  Gonds, 
the  new-bom  sons  of  the  mother-mountain.  On  the  evening 
of  their  release,  while  they  were  cooking  their  pulse  of  kesari 
millet,  the  rain  brought  by  the  Bindo  bird  began  to  fall,  and 
all  the  Gonds  but  the  four  father-Gonds  who  remained 
faithful  to  Lingal  crossed  the  river  while  it  was  low  and  dis- 
appeared for  ever.  But  when  Lingal  and  the  four  Gonds 
wanted  to  cross  the  whole  country  was  submerged  by  the 
flood.  They  were  saved  from  it  by  Dame,  the  tortoise 
(kaswal),  and  Puse,  the  alligator  (mugral)^  Lingal  being 
taken  by  the  tortoise,  and  the  Gonds  by  the  alligator,  the 
race  of  the  Mugh,  or  sons  of  the  alligator,  Muggur  or  Mugral. 
AVhen  the  alligator  tried  to  devour  them,  they  were  saved  by 
Lingal  and  the  tortoise.  When  landed  they  were  taught  by 
Lingal  to  build  houses  {dama\  and  a  town  called  Nur- 
Bhumi,  or  the  town  of  the  hundred  (Nur)  lands,  and  he 
gave  them  bullocks  and  carts  and  taught  them  to  grow  the 
millets^'ozie^aH  (Hohus  sorghum)  and  kesari  {Lathyrus  satixms\ 
the  latter  being  sown  at  the  end  of  the  rains  as  a  second  crop, 
among  the  rice  grown  on  rich  lands  which  are  not  swampy. 
He  divided  the  people  into  four  tribes — (1)  the  Mana-wajas, 
who  made  the  images  of  the  gods ;  (2)  Daliak-wajas  or  drum- 


i 


224  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

bt^aters  ;  (3)  Koilabutal,  or  the  dancers,  and  Koi-kopal,  the 
cow-keepers,  the  ruling  tribe.      With  these  he  united  the 
four  tribes  descended  fi-om  the  Gonds  he  had  brought  down 
in  his  first  avatar — (1)  the  Korkus,  a  Kolarian  tribe;   (2) 
the   Bhils,  or   sons  of  Bhilla,   the  bow,  the  aborigines  of 
Western  India ;  (3)  the  Kolamis,  a  tribe  of  the  south-west  of 
the  Central  Provinces,  who  marry  by  simulated  capture  ;  and 
(4)  the  Kototyal,  or  sons  of  a  log  of  wood,  called  the  Marya 
or  tree-Gonds.     These  formed  the  eight  united  races  of  the 
tortoise  earth.      Lingal  placed  among  them  priests  called 
Ohjas  or  Pardhans,  who   married  the   new-comers   to   the 
daughters  of  the  previous  immigrants,  taught  them  how  to 
make  the  gods  I  have  already  described,  to  sacrifice  to  them 
goats,  cocks,  and  a  calf,  and  to  drink  spirits  {daru\  and  to 
dance  the  religious  dances.     After  giving  these  instructions 
he  disappeared,  that  is  to  say,  became  the  invisible  god  of 
the  new  theology  of  the  growers  of  barley,  binding  them 
before  he  left  *  to  be  true  to  the  tortoise.**    This  picture  of 
the  tortoise-earth  shows  the  epoch    before  the  growth  of 
barley,  and  marks  the  first  stage  of  the  union  of  the  Kush- 
ikas  and  Maghadas,  the  latter  being  the  race  wlio  worsliipped 
the  mother-Maga  as  the  sacred  Mug-gur,or  alligator,  to  whom 
tanks  are  still  dedicated  all  over  Bengal,  but  who  under  the 
rule  of  the  rain-god  became  Push,  the  black  cloud,  which 
afterwards  became  the   black  bull  Pushan.     This  alligator 
myth,  we   find  exactly  repeated  in  Egypt,  wliere  the  god 
Sebek — the  crocodile-god,  who  afterwards  became  Osiris,  the 
father  of  the  bull,  Apis  and  Sebek-ra,  the  sun,  the  crocodile 
fire-god — is  called,  in  hymns   to   Shu   and   Amun,   Maga. 
This    name    Sebek    means    the    '  uniter,*    from    tlie    root 
sbk^  to  join.^     It  is  as  the  uniter  that  he  appears  in  the 
Gond  legend  I  have  just  quoted,  and  the  Sakadwipai  Brah- 
mins of  the  present  day,  who,  like  the  Ashvins,  are  both 
physicians  and  priests,  are  known  by  the  name  of  Maga. 

*  1 1.  Brugsch,  Rclii^ion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^Egypter^  pp.  105,  587, 
718,  722. 


ESSAY  III  225 

They  are  divided  into  territorial  sections,  representing  the 

priests,  of  the  days  when  each  confederacy  of  villages,  called 

the  parka  or  province,  had,  like  those  of  Chota  Nagpore,  its 

special  priests   still   called   by  the   Gond   name   of  ofhas. 

These  are  the  witchfinders,  whose  chief  business    it   is  to 

protect  the  people  from  pestilences,  famines,  and  malignant 

sorcerers.     Their  name  comes  from  the  Northern  root  od,  or 

odj,  or  iorf,  to  know,  which  appears  in  the  names  of  Odin 

and  Buddha,  and  the  name  is  still  a  title  of  the  Maithila 

Brahmins  in  Tirhoot,  and    of  the  Babhuns,  the  powerful 

caste  of  hereditary  landowners  in  Behar.^     It  is  as  Vyasa,  or 

the  uniter,  that  the  father-priest  appears  in  the  Mahabha- 

rata.    He  is  the  son  of  Satya-vati,  she  who  is  possessed  of 

truth,  the  sister  of  Matsya,  the  fish-god,  and  of  the  Rishi 

Para-shara,  the  overhanging  cloud  (shara)^  that  is,  of  the 

god  Bar  or  Shar,  and  like  Sar-ganu,  the  son  of  Sar,  he  was 

^gotten  in  a  mist  among  the  river  reeds.*      He,  on  the 

failure  of  heirs  to  ChitraHgada  and  Vichittra  Virya,  sons  of 

Satyavati  and  the  great  king  Sham-tanu,  raised  up  seed  to 

^hem  by  becoming  the  father  of  Dhritanlshtra,  whose  sons 

^'ere  the  Kauravya  or  sons  of  Kaur,  the  tortoise,  and   of 

-t*andu  the  reputed  father  of  the  Pandava  the  fair  (Pandu) 

^^ces.     This  story  tells  us  how  the  magicians  of  the  age  of 

Witchcraft  became  the  priests  of  the  new  era,  called  Maga 

o^  the  Hindus,  and  Makkhu  by  the  Akkadians,^  the  priests 

^^f  the  goddess  Magha,  called   the  wife  both  of  Sliiva  the 

^liepherd  god  and  Soma.*     But  the  crocodile  god  was  not 

^^nly  the  uniter  of  the  two  races  as  the  priest,  but  also  as 

the  reckoner  of  time,  for  the  Ribhus,  the  makers  of  the  seasons 

in  the  Rigveda,  are  the  Babylonian  Rabu,  the  great  ones,  who 

in  one  ideogram  are  the  Babylonian  form  of  the  Akkadian 

^  Risley,  Trida  af id  Castes  of  Bengal y  vol.  i.  pp.  159,  160  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  138. 
'  Mahabharata  Adi  {Saml»hava)  Parva,  Iv.  p.  318.     Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures 
Jcr  1887,  Led.  i.  p.  26,  note  I. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  pp.  62,  63. 
*  Petersburgh,  Dictioftaryy  s.v.  *  Magha.' 

15 


226  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Nun,  the  *  soul  of  life  in  water,^  out  of  which  the  Egyptian 
god  Sebek-Ra  rose,  and  in  another  Dannu  or  the  sons  of  Dan.^ 
They  are  also  the  sons  of  Rahab  the  Hebrew  for  crocodile, 
and  Rahabu  is  one  of  the  names  of  the  goddess  Istar.^  It  was 
Rahab,  the  crocodile,  who  was  the  courtesan  who  in  Biblical 
history  gave  to  the  Hebrews,  led  by  Joshua,  the  leader  of 
the  sons  of  Ephraim,  meaning  the  two  ashes  (eper)  or  the 
two  united  races,  possession  of  the  city  of  Jericho,  the  moon, 
or  the  yellow  city,*  and  it  was,  as  I  shall  show  when  I  trace 
the  first  beginnings  of  stellarastronomy,the  constellation  of  the 
Shi-shu-mara  or  alligator,  now  called  Draco,  which  supplied 
the  fourteen  stars,  which  were,  according  to  the  Vishnu 
Dharma,  placed  by  God  round  the  pole  to  drive  the  stars 
round  it.*  These  form  the  consecrating  necklace  which,  like 
that  of  Pharsi  Pen,  makes  the  heavenly  pole  the  creating 
god,  and  which  was  the  Hindu  king  Chitrangada,  or  the 
variegated  (chitra)  necklace  or  bracelet  (anffodam)  son  of 
Shaih-tanu.  These  fourteen  stars  of  the  fourteen  days 
which  measure  the  lunar  phases,  were  the  Ribhus  of  the 
Rigvxda.  They  are  the  sons  of  Su-dharvan  ^  the  god  of  the 
creating  (su)  bow  {dharvan\  the  rainbow  god,  who,  as 
Krishanu,  the  heavenly  archer,  is  the  seventh  of  the  Soma 
Guardians.®  It  is  he  who  wounds  the  bird  who  brings  Soma 
to  earth  ;  "^  that  is  to  say,  who  brought  about  the  fulness  of 
time  which  made  the  clouds  send  down  to  earth  the  life- 
giving  rain.  The  recurring  seasons  of  seasonable  rains  and 
sunshine  brought  by  the  Ribhus  are  symbolised  by  the  cups 
made  by  them  to  hold  the  Soma  or  water  of  life.     The  three 

^  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary,  Nos.  66  and  425.  H.  Brugsch, 
Religion  uttd  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^gypler,  p.  105. 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  258  note  i.  Gesenius, 
Thesaurus,  p.  141. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  630.      Yarah  means  yellow,  and  Yareh,  moon. 

**  Sachau*s  Alberunl's  India,  vol.  i.  chap.  xxii.  p.  242. 

•  Rigveda,  iv.  35,  i,  8. 

®  Eggeling,  SaL  Brdh.  iii.  3,  3,  II  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  72. 

7  Rigveda,  iv.  27,  3;  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brah,  i.  7,  1,1;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii. 
183. 


ESSAY  III  227 

Ribhus  or  seasons  are  called  Vaja  (the  strong),  the  artist  of 
all  the  gods,  Vaishvadeva,  the  gods  of  the  villages  (vi^h) 
the  name  of  the  gods  the  spring  season  in  the  three  annual 
festivals  of  the  Chatur-masya.^  Vibh-van  (the  distinguished) 
the  artist  of  Varuna,  to  whom  the  summer  season,  Varuna- 
praghasah,  is  dedicated,^  and  Ribhu,  the  artist  of  Indra, 
the  god  of  the  wet  season,  called  the  Saka-medha,  or  sacri- 
fice of  the  rain-gods  (suk)  in  the  Chatur-masya.^  They 
drank,  like  the  Ashvins,  the  Erinnyes,  Saranyu  and  Hecate 
the  intoxicating  Soma  mixed  with  honey  {SomcL-Madhu)  at 
the  evening  pressing  consecrated  to  the  Ashvins,*  and  made 
successively  two,  three,  and  four  seasons  or  cups  out  of  the 
one  made  by  Tvashtar,*  and  also  made  the  year  cow.*  The 
race  who  worshipped  the  Ribhus  was  that  which  made  the 
successive  years,  reckoned  in  the  computation  of  time  be- 
ginning with  the  year  of  Tvashtar,  extending  from  one  rainy 
season  to  another,  and  including  the  years  of  two  seasons^ 
three,  and  four,  the  last  being  added  when  the  fruits  ripen- 
ing in  the  autumn  became  in  the  mother  fruit-land  of  Iran 
an  important  crop,  and  it  was  they  who  offered  roasted 
barley  to  their  fathers,  the  Pitaro  Barishadah,  at  the  Pitri- 
yajfia  held  together  with  the  Saka-medha  festival,  and  this, 
marks  the  age  as  that  which  preceded  that  of  the  third  class 
of  fathers,  called  Pitaro-'*Gnishvattah,  or  the  fathers  who 
burned  their  dead,  to  whom  was  oflfered  parts  of  the  barley  of 
the  Pitaro  Barishadah,  made  into  porridge  with  the  milk  of 
a  cow  suckling  an  adopted  calf,  that  is,  the  race  of  the  early 
Bronze  Age,  who  adopted  the  year-cow  made  by  the  Ribhus 

*  Rigveda,  iv.  33,  3-1 1,  iv.  34,  6,  iv.  33 ;  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  ii.  5,  i,  i, 
ff.  ;  S.B.E.  voL  xii.  p.  384  fT. 

»  Rigveda,  iv.  33,  9;  Eggeling,  Sat  Brdh.  ii.  5,  2,  i  ff.;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii. 

p.  391  ff. 

»  Rigveda,  iv.  33,  9  ;  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  ii.  5,  3,  i  ff.  S.B.E.  vol.  xiL 
p.  408  ff. 

*  Hillebrandt,  Vedischt  MythologU  Die  Drei  Savanas^  p.  256 ;  Rigveda, 
I,  161,  8 ;  iv.  33,  II,  34,  4,  35,  4,  6,  7,  9. 

'  Rigveda,  iv.  33,  5  ;  i.  .161,  2-4.  «  Ibid,  iv.  33,  4  ;  i.  no,  8. 


228  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

as  their  inother,^   and   offered    the  Soma   sacrifice   of  the 
Sautra  mani,  young  Kusha  grass,  young  ears  of  corn,  and 
roasted  barley.      These  founders  of  the  tortoise  earth  no 
longer,  like  their  forefathers,  looked  on  the  local  gods  as 
supreme,  but  made  the  father  of  life  the  hidden  god  who 
guards  and  distributes  at  the  appointed   seasons  the  life- 
giving  rains.     His  Sadas  or  holy  seat  being  unknown,  he 
could  only  be  called  by  his  worshippers  the  great  Ka,  or 
Who,  the  name  given   to   Prajapati,  the   lord   of  former 
generations,  in  the  ritual  of  the  Varuna  Praghasal^L  or  summer 
sacrifice,  and  to  the  Soma  Dronakalasa,  or  the  cask  or  barrel 
in  which  Soma  is  made,^  the  spirit-world  in  which  the  seed 
of  life  lives.     This  is  tlie  Ka,  or  primaeval  soul  of  Egyptian 
theology.     It  is  the  great  Ka  who  appears  in  the  Rigveda 
as  the  hero  Kutsa,  called  Arjuneya,  or  the  son  of  the  fair  or 
yellow  race,  whose  name  is  derived  from  ku^  where.^      He  is 
the  twin  god  of  Indra,  said  in  one  hymn  to  come  with  Indra 
as  the  two  Ushanas,  or  rain  gods.*      It  is  Kutsa  who,  by 
Indra''s  help,  slays  Shushna,  the  god  of  drought,^  and  brings 
rain  from  heaven  by  conquering  the  Gandharvas  or  Soma 
guardians.®      He  is  called  the  priest  of  the  Varsha-giras,  or 
people  of  the  rain  (Vrishan)  mountain   (g?r?y  and  is  the 
reputed  author  of  one  of  the  collections  of  hymns  in  the 
first    Mandala   of  the  Rigveda,  whose  autiiors  call  them- 
selves in  one  hymn  Varshagiras  of  tlie  race  of  Nahusha  or 
Nagas,  the  sons  of  Naga,  the  hooded  snake.®    He  is,  in  short, 
the  Great  Nag  or  Nahusha,  worsliipped  as  the  supreme  god 
of  Elam  or  Iran,  under  the  name  of  Susi-nag,  down  to  the 
latest  days  of  the  Assyrian  monarchy,®  and  wliose  image  was 
borne  on  the  banners  of  the  Parthian  warriors.     He  is  the 
Naga  god  of  tlie  Pandavas,  called  Parthava  or  the  sons  of 

^  Eggeling,  Saf,  Brdh,  ii.  6,  I,  5,  6 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  421. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdk.  ii.  5,  2,  13 ;  iv.  5,  6,  4,  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  395  ; 
xxvi.  p.  41a  ^  Rigveda,  vii.  19,  2  ;  viii.  i.  11. 
.    <  Ibid,  v.  31,  8.                    »  Ibid.  vii.  19,  2.  «  Ibid.  viii.  I,  II. 

^  Ibid,  vii.  25,  5.  8  jifij^  j^  iQQ^  16-18. 

•  Maspero,  Ancient  Egypt  and  Assyria^  p.  316. 


ESSAY  III  229 

Prithu  the  Dravidian  mother,  the  Shesh  Nag  worshipped  by 
the  Takkas  as  a  rain  god,^  and  Sek-Nag  the  god  of  the 
Raj,  or  royal  race  of  Gonds,  bom  (ja)  of  Ra,  that  is,  the  sons 
of  Ra-hu,  the  begetting  (hu)  creating  fire-god  (/?a),  and  the 
descendants  of  the  barley  growers.  His  festival  is  held 
every  seven  years,  and  is  attended  only  by  males,  who  are 
bound  to  secrecy  as  to  its  rites.  All  the  worshippers  must 
appear  naked  before  the  god,  whose  image  is  a  wooden  snake 
placed  under  the  tree  sacred  to  him,  the  Saja  tree  {TerminaJia 
icnnentosa\  and  seven  cocoa-nuts,  showing  that  his  rule  ex- 
tended to  the  sea,^  seven  pieces  of  betel  nut,  milk,  and  flowers 
but  no  animal  victims  are  offered  to  him.*  He  is  the  god 
called  in  the  Mahabharata  Shesh  Nag,  the  oldest  of  the 
snakes,  who  was  placed  under  the  tortoise  earth  to  support 
it ;  that  is,  as  I  shall  show,  made  the  plough  god,  when 
Vasuki  took  his  place  as  the  god  who  churned  the  Amrita, 
or  water  of  life,  from  the  ocean  by  the  churning  staff.  Mount 
Mandara,  and  brought  down  the  life-giving  rains.  This 
god,  the  great  Nag,  or  the  soul  of  life  in  the  rain-cloud, 
the  heavenly  snake,  is  the  second  of  the  two  snakes  which 
face  one  another  in  the  caduceus  of  Hermes.  The  other 
being  the  Ahi  or  Echis,  the  snake  of  earth,  the  guardian  of 
the  home  of  the  gods  in  the  primaeval  village,  and  his 
worshippers  were  the  race  who  added  the  rainy  season  to 
the  four  seasons  of  summer,  autumn,  winter,  and  spring, 
which  had  been  the  number  reckoned  by  the  Ribhus  l)efore 
India  became  the  chief  seat  of  the  Kushika  or  Naga  rule. 
Also  in  the  caduceus  of  Hermes,  with  its  central  staff,  the 
twining  snakes,  and  the  wings  outstretched  at  the  point 
where  the  snakes  begin  to  form  the  sacred  trident,  we  see  a 
complete  reproduction   of  the  Gond   god  Pliarsi  Pen,   as 

*  Oldham,  *  Serpent  Worship  in  lvid.\2iy*  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society , 
July  1891,  pp.  361,  362,  387,  388.390. 

^  Cocoa-nuts  will  not  flourish  outside  the  influence  of  the  sea  breeze. 

'  These  details  were  given  to  me  by  the  High  Priest  of  the  Raj  Gonds  in 
Chutti^urh  in  the  Central  Provinces. 


S30  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

altered  by  progressive  mythology ;  for  the  hollow  bamboo  in 
which  the  trident  is  fixed  is  replaced  by  the  lower  fold  of 
the  snakes,  whose  heads  appear  as 
the  two  side  prongs  of  the  trident, 
were,  in  the  Gond  god,  the  two 
wives  of  the  Linga  god,  and  the 
wings  depicted  on  the  caduceus,  aa 
well  as  on  the  heeb  and  cap  of  the 
god,  are  those  of  the  messenger  bird 
of  Naga  theology,  whose  mythic 
history  I  will  tell  presently.  It  is 
ia  the  five  Gond  festivals  called  Akkhadj,  Jivati,  Pola, 
Dihali,  and  Shimga  that  we  can  best  trace  the  origin  and 
growth  of  the  worship  of  the  Great  Nag  the  father  god 
of  the  ploughing  race,  the  sons  of  the  sheep-motlier  I^a,* 

1.  UtesummerJestivalcalledAklihadi  by  the  Central  Province 
Gonds  and  Alchttij  in  the  North-west. 
This  is  the  worship  of  the  cart  axle  or  Akkha  of  the  Soma 
cart,  over  and  under  wliich  as  I  have  shown,  the  Soma  and 
Sura  cups  were  consecrated  at  the  Vsja-peya  festival,  and  this 
Soma  cart  is  tiie  Gond  plough  and  the  god  of  the  plough, 
both  being  called  Nagur  or  the  rain  snake,  which  rules  the 
season  in  which  the  rains  are  engendered.  It  is  held  on  the 
18th  Baisakh  (April-May),  and  new  grain  is  then  eaten, 
the  making  of  agricultural  implements  begun ;  and  in  this 
we  sec  the  origin  of  the  Roman  custom,  commemorated  by 
the  following  lines  of  Ovid,  which  l>oun<l  each  craftsmen  to 
work  for  a  short  time  at  his  craft  on  New  Year's  Day : — 

Tempora  commisi  nasceutia  rebus  ageudis 

TotuB  al>  auapicio  ne  foret  annus  liters 

QuiEi]ue  suas  artes  ob^idem  delibat  agendo, 

Nee  plus  quam  solitum  testiticatur  opus. — Ovid,  Fasti  i.  170- 
and  in  accordance  with  this  custom,  the  plough,  in  spite  of 
hardness  of  the  ground,  is  passed  lightly  over  the  lands  on 
'  Smith,  Classical  DUtienary,  s.v.  '  Hermes.' 


ESSAY  HI  231 

the  Akkhadi  day,  but  the  sowing  of  seed  is  expressly  for- 
bidden.^ 

That  the  festival  was  one  to  the  rain-god  is  still  more 
clearly  shown  by  the  rites  observed  at  it  by  the  Ooraons,  who 
claim  to  have  first  introduced  the  plough  into  Chota 
Nagpore.  They  call  it  the  Sar-hul,  or  the  festival  of  the 
Sar,  and  the  time  of  its  observance  depends  upon  the  flower- 
ing of  the  Sal  tree,  the  Dravidian  parent  tree.  Five  fowls 
are  offered  to  the  tree  in  the  soma  or  village  grove,  by  the 
pahan  or  village  priest,  cooked  with  rice,  and  eaten  by  those 
present.  After  partaking  of  the  bird  of  the  dawn,  who  was 
in  Greece  sacred  to  iEsculapius,  the  physician  to  the  gods, 
as  the  Ashvins  were  in  India,  they  go  and  gather  the  sal- 
flowers,  which  they  bring  into  the  village.  Next  day  the 
pahan^  with  some  male  friends,  takes  these  flowers  round  in 
a  basket  to  every  house,  and  at  each  the  women  meet  him 
with  water  to  wash  his  feet,  and  kneel  before  him  respectfully. 
He  then  dances  with  them,  and  places  some  of  the  sal-flowers 
over  the  door  of  the  house  and  in  the  women'*s  hair.  This  is 
the  sign  that  the  prayers  for  rain  are  favourably  answered, 
and  as  evidence  of  their  efficacy  the  women  dash  their  water- 
vessels  over  the  pahati,  and  console  him  for  his  ducking  by 
giving  him  copious  draughts  of  home-brewed  beer.^  It  is  at 
the  corresponding  festival  in  Bur  mail  that  both  men  and 
women  douse  every  one  they  meet  witli  water ;  and  the  same 
custom  is  observed  at  the  festival  of  the  flowering  of  the  sal- 
tree,  called  Bahu  or  the  Great  Puja  by  the  Santals,  when 
men  and  women  drench  each  other  with  water  from  peculiarly 
shaped  vessels,  and  when  tlie  worshippers  partake  of  the 
victims  offered  in  tribal  and  family  sacrifices.'  But  the 
early  history  and  origin  of  the  feast  in  its  Northern  home 
are  most  conspicuously  shown  in  the  ceremonies  of  the  corre- 

^  EUiot,  SettUffunt  Report  on  Hoshungabad  Settlements^  para.  98,  p.  195  ; 
Elliot,  Supplementary  Glossary  N,  W.  Provinces,  s.v.  *  Akhtuj,'  p.  13. 
'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  pp.  146,  147. 
^  Ibid,  vol.  ii.  p.  233. 


232  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

spending  Italian  festival,  called  the  Palilia,  that  is,  the  straw 
(pales)  festival  of  the  wheat  and  barley-growing  races.  It 
was  held  in  honour  of  the  plough ing-god,  the  (Je-orgos,  the 
worker  {ourgos)  of  the  earth  {ge)^  who  has  become  the 
St.  Greorge  of  our  calendar,  but  who  was  originally  the  great 
Nagur,  or  heavenly  plough.  His  festival  is  on  the  23d  of 
April,  and  the  Italian  Palilia  was  held  in  all  towns  and 
villages  on  the  21st  of  that  month,  and  corresponded  to  the 
Athenian  festival  of  the  Mounuchia  to  Artemis,  who,  as  the 
goddess  to  whom  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  the 
heavenly  plough,  are  sacred,  is  the  mother  of  the  ploughing 
race.  All  who  took  part  in  it  washed  their  hands  with 
freshly  fallen  dew  after  they  had  first  lighted  the  sacred  fire 
of  straw  and  hay  with  flint  sparks  and  driven  their  cattle 
through  it,  praying  for  their  welfare  and  for  good  corn  and 
hay  crops  during  the  year.  It  was  when  purified  with  holy 
dew  and  consecrated  to  the  water-god  that  tlie  men  sprang 
through  the  fire  and  thus  sacrificed  themselves  botli  with  fire 
and  hallowed  water,  the  two  creators  of  life.^  This  custom 
of  bathing  in  dew  is  found  in  England,  Germany,  Portugal, 
and  Egypt,  and  in  these  countries  it  was  the  custom  to  bathe 
in  the  evening  dew  on  the  May  or  Maga  festival  and  at  that 
of  the  summer  solstice. 

2.  The  Jucati — The  Rainij  Season  Feast 

This  is  held  in  Srabon  or  August,  the  Sanskrit  Shnlvana 
or  the  lame  nionth,^  and  is  observed  tis  the  Nag  Puncliami,  or 
feast  of  the  five  (punch)  Nagas,  by  all  Hindus.  It  is  called  in 
the  Grihya-sutras  the  Sra-vanas,  held  on  the  full-moon  day  of 
Sravana,  when  fried  barley  is  offered  to  the  gods,  and  tlie  snakes 
are  worshipped.  It  is  the  great  NSga  festival,  the  festival  to 
the  season  introduced  by  the  Naga  races.  It  is  called  by  tlie 
Ooraons  the  Kurnim  festival,  for  the  sacred  tree  worshipped 

^  Mannhardt,  IVald  und  FeU  A'uliur,  vol.  ii.  pp.  303-315. 
-  Gra^smann,  IVorierbttrh  ztim  Ki^ieda^ 's.w  *Shravana.' 


ESSAY  III  233 

is    tie   kurma-tree   {Nauclea  parvifoUa)^  and   corresponds 
witVi  the  older  festival  of  Gurh-puja,  celebrated  when  the 
rice  grown  in  the  seed-beds  is  first  planted  out.     But  the 
Kitrruniy  which  is  observed  by  all  Hindus  in  Chota  Nagpore, 
is  not  a  rice,  but  a  barley  festival.     The  day  before  it  the 
^lage  boys  and  girls,  after  fasting,  go  into  the  forest  and 
cut  a  branch  of  the  kurma-tree.     It  is  planted  in  the  Akra, 
or  village  dancing-ground,  and  a  sacrifice  is  offered  to  it  by 
the  pahan^  and  this  is  followed  by  dancing  kept  up  during 
the  night;  and  at  early  dawn  the  young  people  of  both 
sexes,  wearing  bracelets  and  necklets  of  plaited  straw,  dance 
round  the  tree,  and  then  the  daughters  of  the  village  head- 
man bring  into  the  Akra  baskets  of  young  barley  taken  up 
by  the  roots,  which  they  have  cultivated.     These  have  been 
grown  in  moist  sandy  soil,  mixed  with  turmeric,  the  sacred 
plant  of  the  yellow  race,  and   are   consequently  primrose 
yellow.      The  girls   first   prostrate   themselves    before   the 
kurma-tree,  and  offer  to  it  barley  shoots.     They  then  give 
those  that  remain  among  the  company,  each  person  getting 
a  few,  which  they  place  in  their  hair,  and  thus  the  union  of 
the  yellow  sons  of  the  barley  with  the  earlier  rice-growers  is 
accomplished   by   transplanting   among    them    the    barley 
shoots.^ 

3.  The  Pola^  or  Autuvin  Feast. 

This  is  a  festival  to  the  ploughing-oxen  who  plough  the 
land  for  the  barley  and  other  cold-weather  crops:  it  is 
held  on  the  new  moon  of  Bhadon,  the  date  when  the  Pit- 
riyajfia  or  sacrifice  to  the  Fathers,  celebrated  in  Bengal, 
ends.     The  oxen  are  then  worshipped  and  get  an  extra  feed. 

4.  The  Dibatiy  or  Winter  Festival, 

This  is  a  festival  to  the  star-gods.  It  is  held  on  the  new 
moon  of  Khartik,  the  month  sacred  to  theKrittakas  or  Pleiades. 
The  houses  are  then  all  illuminated  with  lamps  to  simulate 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  ii.  pp.  145,  146. 


234  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tlie  stars,  and  tlie  oxen  are  not  allowed  to  sleep.  These  two 
festivals  do  not  correspond  with  any  of  those  of  the  Mundas, 
OoraonSy  or  Santals,  or  other  early  immigrant  tribes  into 
Eastern  India,  and  the  fact  that  in  both  the  ox  is  the  sacred 
animal  shows  that  they  were  introduced  by  a  people  who 
deified  the  ox  and  the  cow  in  place  of  the  goat  and  the  sheep. 

5.   T/ie  Shim-gu^  or  Magh  Sprinff  Festival. 

This  answers  exactly  to  the  national  Saturnalia  of  the  Hos, 
Mundas,  Ooraons,  and  Santals,  held  in  January-February 
at  tlie  season  when  the  carnival,  the  Saturnalia  of  Southern 
Europe,  takes  place,  and  to  which  our  St.  Valentine'*s  day 
and  the  Athenian  month  Gamelion,  or  the  marrying  month, 
which  have  always  been  connected  with  love  and  marriage, 
belongs. 

We  see  that  in  this  series  of  festivals  the  origin  of  life  is 
ascribed  to  the  rain,  and  it  was  the  rain-worshippers,  the 
sons  of  the  shepherd-god,  who  looked  on  dew,  running  water, 
and  rain,  as  his  most  sanctifying  gifts,  who  originated  in  the 
confederacy  of  the  mountain  of  the  East  the  Flood  legend, 
telling  of  the  baptism  and  purification  of  the  earth  polluted 
by  the  ritual  of  the  magicians,  fire,  and  phallic  worshippers. 
Tlie  Akkadian  story,  as  compared  with  that  of  Genesis,  tells 
us  that  the  Flood  was  sent  by  la ;  for  the  forty  days'*  and 
forty  nights'  rain  is  the  number  sacred  to  la.  It  also  tells  of 
a  revolt  against  the  worship  of  the  fire-god,  for  Khasisadra, 
the  experienced  man,  otherwise  called  Shama-napistira,  the 
son  of  life,  saved  in  the  ship  he  built  by  Ia'*s  advice,  says  he 
embarked  in  it  because  Bil-gi,  the  fire-god,  hated  him,  and 
that  he  had,  therefore,  made  la  his  god.  But  this  is  a 
theological  recension  of  the  original  story,  which  made  the 
passenger  in  the  ship  of  the  gods  not  a  son  of  man,  but 
Dumu-zi,  the  son  of  life,  the  only  son  of  Istar,  called  by  the 
Semites  Tammuz  of  the  Flood.^     He,  as  Manu,  the  thinker, 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  233. 


ESSAY  III  235 

was  the  father  of  the  sons  of  Ida,  the  ewe-mother,  the 
purified  earth,  who  was  engendered  by  him  from  the  water 
at  the  end  of  a  year  by  the  heavenly  seed  of  clarified  butter, 
sour  milk,  curds  and  whey,  which  he  threw  into  it ;  that  is  to 
say,  the  earth  was  sanctified  by  the  god  of  the  year,  who 
begins  his  voyage  by  the  baptism  of  his  offspring.^  It  is  the 
•tortoise  earth,  called  in  the  Song  of  Lingcd  Dame,  the 
tortoise,  on  which  Lingal,  and  the  Gonds  saved  by  him  from 
the  Flood  and  the  alligator  built  the  houses  of  the  house- 
ijdama)  building  race.  This  land  was  the  Gan-Edin,  the 
enclosure  (Gan)  of  the  plain  {Edin)  of  the  new  race  of  the 
sons  of  Naga,  the  great  rain-god,  who  called  the  districts  into 
which  they  divided  the  country  by  the  Akkadian  name  Nanga,* 
the  Hindu  Nangur,  meaning  a  plough  of  land.  The  cities, 
the  centres  and  capitals  of  the  united  confederacies  of  villages 
<!alled  parhas,  they  called  Nagur,  and  they  called  themselves 
the  sons  of  the  plough  Nagur,  the  Nahusha  of  the  Rigveda,  or 
by  that  name  by  which  they  are  also  known  in  the  Rigveda 
and  Mahabharata,  the  Srifijaya  or  sons  of  the  sickle  («SWm),  also 
called  the  Panchala  or  worsliippers  of  tlie  five  (Pafich)  Naga 
gods,  the  five  seasons  of  the  year.  It  was  they  who  ruled 
the  Doab,  or  land  watered  by  the  Jumna  and  Ganges,  and 
their  sacred  fire,  produced  by  Devavata  tlie  Bharata,  is  said 
in  the  Rigveda  to  be  the  Agni  Jatavedas  placed  in  the 
centre  of  the  altar.'  The  five  gods  of  tlie  Gond  Pantheon 
are  * — 1.  Bhimsen,  the  Hindu  Bhima,  the  god  of  the  Dosadhs, 
the  fire- worshippers  of  the  club  and  the  sacrificial  stake; 
2.  Mata,  the  mother-god  of  the  village ;  3.  Mata-mai,  the 
mother  of  the  united  confederacy,  the  two  mothers  of  the 
allied  races;  4.  The  boundary-god  Goraya,  the  Ahi  or 
sacred  snake  of  earth,  who  guards  the  boundaries  of  the  holy 
shrines,  the  villages,  provinces,  and  kingdoms ;  5.  The  god 
Hanuman,  the  ape-god,  also  called  Maroti,  or  the  tree-god, 

^  Eggeling,  So/,  Brdh,,  i.  8.  I.  7-9  ;  S.B.E.,  vol.  xii.  pp.  218,  219. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary y  No.  432. 

•  Rigveda,  iv.  15,  4 ;  iii.  23,  2,  3.  *  Song  0/  Lingal ,  Canto  v. 


J 


236  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

and  Vayu,  the  wind-god,  who  is  tlie  Naga  or  rain-snake.  To 
these  was  added  (6)  the  moon-goddess,  called  Pandhari,  or 
Mu-chandri,  the  reckoner  of  time,  by  the  sacred  period  of 
seven  days,  and  the  last  day  of  this  period  was  consecrated 
to  the  seventh  god,  the  god  Saturn,  the  Kronos  of  the  Greeks, 
who  is  depicted  with  the  lunar  sickle  in  his  hand.  He  was 
the  god  of  (7)  the  deceased  ancestors,  who  are  always 
reverenced  by  the  Gonds,  who  bury  their  dead.  It  was  these 
people  who  founded  the  national  cemeteries  or  cities  of  the 
dead,  like  the  Akkadian  city  of  Gudua,^  consecrated  to 
Ner-gal,  the  strong  (7ier)  one,  the  invincible  god  of  the  dead. 
One  of  these  ancestral  burying-places  still  exists  in  the 
Tamar  province  of  the  Lohardugga  district  of  Chota  Nagpore, 
and  the  custom  of  conveying  the  dead  to  the  ancient 
cemetery,  from  which  the  Egyptian  journey  of  the  mummy 
in  the  '  ship  of  the  dead  **  originated,  is  still  observed  by  the 
Ooraons,  with  additions  made  after  the  burning  of  the  dead 
became  customary.  They  collect  the  bones  after  the  corpse 
has  been  burned,  and  place  them  in  a  new  earthen  vessel, 
which  is  hung  on  a  post  in  front  of  the  door  of  the  deceased 
person'*s  house.  The  bones  of  those  wlio  liave  died  in  the 
year  remain  there  till  December  or  January,  when  they  are 
taken  in  their  cinerary  urns  to  the  burial-places  of  their 
respective  ancestors,  and  there  placed  in  the  grave  made  for 
each  urn,  which  is  covered  with  a  large  flat  stone.  No 
weddings  can  take  place  in  a  village  wliile  any  dead  remain 
in  it,  hence  the  time  for  weddings  is  that  immediately 
after  the  village  funerals,  and  it  is  apparently  in  con- 
nection with  this  custom  that  Magh  or  February  is  the 
month  of  the  great  national  Saturnalia,  and  Phrigun  tlie 
wedding  month.  This  Akkadian  god  Ner-gal  is  the 
Phoenician  god  Sar-rabu,  or  the  Great  Sar,  who  I  have 
shown  to  be  the  Great  Naga.  His  name  among  the  Shuites, 
or  the  worsliippers  of  Susi-nag  on  the  west  of  the  Euphrates, 
is  Emu,  a  name  which  is  letter  for  letter  the  same  as  that  of 

^  Sayce,  Hihbert  Lfcturesfor  1887,  Lect.  iii.  pp.  194,  197. 


ESSAY  III  237 

'the  national  god  of  the  Ammonites,  Amun.^     Amun  means 
the  builder  or  architect,  and  is,  like  that  of  the  Egyptian 
god,  formed  from  Aman,  to  sustain.^   He  was  the  god  of  the 
house-pole,  who  became  in  Egyptian  Thebes  Amen-ra,  the 
hidden,  and  it  was  the  people  who  made  the  house-pole  the 
symbol  of  their  ancestors,  and  grouped  their  images  round 
it,  as  the  Mai  Paharias  do,'  who  brought  to  Egypt,  as  well 
as  to  Assyria  and  India,  the  custom  of  having  cities  for  the 
dead  apart  from  those  for  the  living.      These  sons  of  the 
house-pole  in  India  called  their  tribal  mother  Amba,  and  her 
legend  tells  us  that  she  was  the  daughter  of  the  king  of 
Kashi,  carried  oflf  by  Bhishma,  with  her  two  sisters,  Ambika 
and  Amvalika,  as  wives  for  Vichittra  Virya,  who  was  after- 
wards, when  released  by  Bhishma,  repudiated  on  account  of 
this  disgrace  by  Salwa,  the  king  of  Sauba,  the  capital  of  the 
magicians,  to  whom  she  had  been  previously  betrothed.     She 
afterwards,  to  revenge  herself  on  Bhishma,  was  by  the  grace 
of  Shiva,  the  shepherd-god,  bom  as  Shikandin,  the  bisexual 
child  of  Drupada,  the  king  of  Panchala,  and  in  this  form  she 
killed  Bhishma,  the  eighth  Dyu,  the  Northern  sun-god,  in  the 
war  between  the  Kauravyas  and  Pandavas.*   She  thus  became 
the  national  deity  Shiva-Uma  or  Parvati,  the  god  Shiva  and 
his  mountain  wife  (Parvati).     It  was  her  sisters  who  in  on 
legend  became  the  mothers  of  Dhritarashtra  and  Pandu,  the 
fathers  of  the  Kauravyas  and  Pandavas,  and  in  another  the 
mothers  of  Jarasandha,  after  being  made  pregnant  by  an 
Am  or  mango.     They  thus  established  the  am  or  mango-tree 
as  the  mother-tree  of  the  males  of  the  Kurmi  or  tortoise  race, 
to  which  they  are  first  wedded  before  being  married  to  their 
wives.*     But  long  before  they  came  to  India  and  made  the 
mango  their  father  fruit-tree,  they  had  in  Asia  Minor  made 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  196  note  i. 

^  Gesenius,  Thesaurus ^  P*  i^S* 

'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol  ii.  p.  71. 

^  Mahabharata  Udyoga  Parva,  clxxi-cxciv. 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  voL  i.  p.  531, 


238  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIiMES 

the  fig-tree  the  parent  tree  of  those  who  added  fruit-trees  to 
the  cereal  crops  grown  on  the  national  farms.  This  fig-tree, 
the  parent  tree  of  the  race  of  barley-growers,  is  that  which 
supplies  the  house-pole  in  the  Soma  sacrifice.  For  the 
house-pole  of  the  Sadas,  or  consecrated  seat  of  the  national 
father-god  Vivasvat,  the  house  of  the  priests,  is  ordered  ta 
be  made  of  the  Udumbara  tree  {Ficus  ghmercUa),  and  this, 
wlien  solemnly  erected  in  the  Sadas,  is  watered  with  water 
mixed  with  barley  grains.  It  is  especially  worshipped  in 
the  Garhapatya  ceremonies  at  the  close  of  the  Soma  sacrifice, 
when  the  priests  sit  round  it  and  toucli  it  as  they  invoke 
blessings  on  the  house  after  the  Hotar  lias  muttered  the 
same  hymn  of  the  Queen  of  the  Serpents,  Kadru  (Rigveda, 
X.  119),  which  is  used  at  tlie  Agniyadliana  or  consecration  of 
the  houseliold  fire.^  The  throne  on  which  Soma  is  placed 
when  taken  from  the  cart  is  of  Udumbara- wood,^  and  so  is 
the  staff  given  by  the  Adhvaryu  to  the  sacrificer  at  the 
Dikshayana,  or  initiation  ceremony,  after  he  has  been  re-born 
and  consecrated  to  perform  tlie  Soma  ceremony,  being 
cleansed  of  his  sins  by  the  baptismal  bath.*  The  stafl[  of 
Vaishya  students  is,  according  to  Manu  Apastamba  and 
Vashishtha,  to  be  made  of  Udumbara  wood,  and  they  are, 
like  the  Akkadian  priests,  to  be  clothed  in  goat-skins.^  Pliny 
calls  the  trading  race  of  Saus  living  in  Cutcli,  in  the  delta  of 
the  Indus,  Odomboeroe,  and  Prof.  Lassen  gives  Audombara 
as  the  name  used  by  Hindu  geographers  to  denote  this  region.^ 
The  fig-tree,  the  fatlier-tree  of  the  Shus,  becomes  in  the 
Maliubharata  the  mother-tree  of  the  Naga  sons  of  Kashyapa, 

*  Eggeling,  SaL  Brah,  iii.  6.  i.  6-12;  S.B.E.  vol,  xxvi.  pp.  142-143. 

2  Eggeling,  Sat.  BnVi.,  iv.  6,  9,  17,  21,  22  ;  ii.  I,  4,  28,  29  ;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxvi.  pp.  451,  453,  454  ;  vol.  xii.  p.  301. 
'  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  iii.  3,  4,  27  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  84. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  iii,  2.  I.  33  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  34. 

8  Biihler,  ManUy  ii.  45.  41  ;  Apastamba y  i.  1,2,  38,  i.  I,  3,  6  ;  Vashishtha^ 
xi.  54,  63  ;  Baudhdyanay  i.  2,   15  ;  S.B.E.  vol.   xxv.  pp,  37,  38,  ii,  pp.  9, 
10,  xiv.  pp.  57,  150. 

^  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India,  pp.  302,  303. 


ESSAY  III  239 

e  father  of  the  tortoise  race,  for  they  are  said  to  be  the 
«Dns  of  his  thirteentli  wife,  Ka-dru,  the  tree  (dpi)  of  Ka,  or 
lie  God  Prajapati,^  and  it  was  she  who  in  the  Brahmanas 
received  the  Soma  brought  from  heaven  by  the  sacred  bird, 
he  messenger  of  the  gods.*    This  was  the  bisexual  tree  of 
^Adam  and  Eve,  the  tree  of  the  Northern  Shus,  as  distin- 
.guished  from  the  parent-tree  of  the  Shus,  which   was  the 
<late-palm,  a  male  and  female  tree,  which  can  only  fructify 
by  impregnation.     This  last  was  especially  the  tree  of  the 
sons  of  the  goat,  the  Vim  worshippers,  while  the  bisexual 
fig-tree  was  that  sacred  to  the  matriarchal  races  united  with 
the  shepherd  sons  of  Ida.     But  though  the  Udumbara-tree 
was  for  ritualistic  purposes,  the  parent  fig-tree  of  the  sons 
of  the  house-pole,  it  was  not  the  tree  adopted  as  the  parent- 
tree  in  the  popular  historical  mythology.     To  find  this  we 
must  turn  to  the  history  of  Yayati,  the  son  of  Nahusha  the 
Great  Naga.^    Like  the  other  fathers  of  united  races,  he  had 
two  wives,  one  Sharmishtha,  the  daughter  of  King  Vrisha- 
parva,  meaning  the  rainy  quarter,  that  is,  the  West,  who  had 
put  Yayati'^s  goddess-wife,  the  daughter  of  Shukra,  the  rain- 
god,  down  a  well,  the  sacrificial  pit  of  the  early  sacrificers, 
where  she  remained  for  a  thousand  years,  till  rescued  by 
Yayati,  who  married  her.      Of  these  two  wives,  Sharmishtha 
was  the  daughter  of  the  fire-god,  and  Devayani  of  Shukra,  the 
rain-god,  and  Sharmishtha  was  the  mother  of  the  Maghada 
races,  and  Devayani  of  the  two  twin  races  from  the  North  who 
completed  the  civilisation  begun  by  those  who  first  founded 
the  empire  of  the  Eushika.     The  name  Sharmishtha  means 
'  she  who  is  most  protecting,'  *  and  as  her  sons  belonged  to  a 
race  who  made  the  fig-tree  their  mother,  she  must  be  the  Bur 
or  Banyan  tree,  the  Ficus  Indica,  which  in  Buddhist  legend 
is  the  sacred  tree  of  Kashyapa,^  the  ancestor  of  the  great 

^  Mahabharata  Adi  {Astika)  Parva,  xx.  xxv.-xxxv. 

'  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  iii.  6.  2.  8-12  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  150,  151. 

'  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sambhava)  Parva,  Ixxv.  to  Ixxxv.  p.  228-260. 

*  Fr.  Sharmatty  *  protection.*  '  FausbOll, /<f/fl^fl,  vol.  i.  p.  43,  §.  245. 


240  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

race  of  the  Bharata,  or  sons  of  the  ruling  race  of  Burs  who  gave 
India  its  name  of  Bharata  varsha.     Her  sons  were  Druhyu 
Anu,  and   Puru.      The  Druhyu,  wliose  name  means  'the 
cunning  one,**  are  the  sons  of  the  Druh  or  Druj,  the  witch- 
craft denounced  in  the  Zendavesta^  the  witch-goddess  who 
appears  in  the  Rigveda  as  the  forerunner  of  Prishni,  the 
mother  of  the  Maruts,^  and  as  the  malicious  witch  Druh, 
whom  Indra  shoots  with  his  arrows.^       Her  sons  are  called 
Yatus,  or  sons  of  Ya,  in  the  Zendavesta,  and  these  Druhyus 
are  said  in  the  Mahabharata  to  represent  the  modem  race  of 
Bhojas  or  cattle  herdsmen,  who  generally  incline  to  the  Shiva 
or  Sakti  sect  of  Linga  worshippers.   The  Anu  are  the  people  of 
the  villages  called  in  the  Mahabharata  Mlecchas,  who  worship 
the  village  gods,  who  received  the  name  of  Anu,  the  local 
gods,  just  as  the  same  deities  were  called  the  Anats  of  the 
Canaanite  villagers  the  Hivites,  who  traced  their  descent  to 
Anah,  the  mother  of  the  wife  of  Esau,  the  goat-god.^      The 
ruling  race  of  thePurus  are  the  sons  of  Kutsa,  called  Purukutsa, 
the  god  Ku,  the  Eastern  races  who  united  all  the  tribes  of 
India  under  the  rule  of  the  Kushikas.     It  was  the  Purus  who 
supplied  the  reforming  and  progressive  elements  which  consoli- 
dated the  empire,  and  it  was  they  who  first  made  efforts  to 
make  the  moral  law  the  law  of  life,  just  as  the  orderly  succession 
of  phenomena  is  the  law  of  Nature.    It  was  they  who  replaced 
the  Demanos  or  Bhukuts,  the  intoxicated  priests  of  the  age 
of  witchcraft,  by  the  Pra-shastri,*  the  teacher,  the  remem- 
berer of  and  instructor  in  the  Shastras  or  records  of  the 
divine  law,  which  was  the  original  title  of  the  priest,  after- 
wards  called    Mitra-Varuna.       He   was  the   Asipu  of  the 
Akkadians,  the  divine  framer,  expounder,  and  guardian  of 
the  national  traditions,  the  historical  myths  which   were, 
before  the  days  of  writing,  stored  in  the  memory  of  the 
hereditary  teachers,  who  had  received  them  from  their  fore- 

^  Rigveda,  x.  73.  2.  2  /^/^  jy   23.  7. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  iox  1887,  Lect.  iii.  pp.  187,  188;  Gen.  xxxvi. 
I- 14*  *  Rigveda,  i.  94.  6,  ii.  5.  4. 


ESSAY  III  241 

fathers,  who  compiled  them  under  a  vivid  sense  of  their  re- 
sponsibility for  their  correctness,  and  by  rules  which  were 
looked  on  as  inspired.  They  were  the  sons  of  Joseph,  whose 
name  means  the  Asipu  of  the  Jews,  the  Gurus  or  tribal 
teachers  of  the  Hindus,  and  the  Exegetae  of  the  Greeks. 
Their  mother  Rachel,  the  ewe,  was  loved  by  Jacob  before 
Leah,  the  wild  cow,^  and  as  Zarah,  the  red,  or  the  father  of 
the  red  race,  the  youngest  of  the  twin  sons  of  Tamar,  the 
Babylonian  palm-tree,  ruled  those  of  his  elder  brother  Perez, 
the  breach*  or  the  cleaving-pole,  so  Ephraim,  the  two  Aslies 
{Eper\  the  youngest  son  of  Joseph,  ruled  the  eldest,  the 
Manassite  priests  of  the  phallic- worshipping  sons  of  Dan.* 
The  age  of  the  Asipu  is  that  which  inaugurated  tliat  of  the 
twin  sons  of  DevayanI,  the  lieavenly  (deva)  Ya,  the  Yadu- 
Turvashu,  and  it  was  then  that  the  stars  first  began  to  be 
systematically  studied,  and  their  guiding  stars  were  the  twin- 
stars  of  Gemini,  the  Ashvins,  or  heavenly  horsemen,  who  live 
with  Vivasvat,*  who  were  first  the  day  and  night,  and  who, 
as  I  have  shown,  substituted  honey -drink,  *  Madhu,^  for  the 
Sura  or  spirits  previously  drunk  at  sacrifices.  They  are  called 
in  the  Brahmanas  the  Adhvaryu,  or  ceremonial  priests  of 
the  gods  who  laid  the  foundations  of  the  elaborate  ritual  of 
the  Soma  sacrifice,^  and  it  was  their  worshippers  who  brought 
with  them  from  their  home  in  Asia  Minor  the  three  seasons 
typified  in  the  three-lipped  cup  allotted  to  the  Ashvins,^ 
which  were  adopted  as  those  of  the  Chatur  masya.  It  is  these 
three  seasons   which   also   appear  in  their  Soma  offerings, 

*  Gen.  xxix.  18-27.  *  /dt'd.  xxxviii.  28-30. 

*  3td.  xlviii.  14-20;  Judges  xviii.  30,  31,  where  Jonathan,  the  son  of 
Gershom,  is  called  both  the  son  of  Manasses  and  the  son  of  Moses,  but  Ger- 
sbom  is  also  the  eldest  son  of  Levi,  and  his  descendants,  the  Gershom- 
ites,  whose  name  means  '  those  turned  out,'  were  employed  only  in  menial 
offices,  and  represented  the  older  race  of  priests,  turned  out  by  the  sons  of 
Kohath,  the  prophet  priests;  Numb.  iv.  21-27;  Gesenius,  Thesaurus^  s.v. 
*  Gershom.' 

*  Rigveda,  i.  46,  13. 

'  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brah,  iv.  I,  5,  16;  S.6.E.  vol.  xxvi,  p.  276. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  iv.  I,  5,  19  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi. p.  272,  note  4,  278. 

16 


242  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

young  kusha-grass,  young  corn-shoots,  as  in  the  Kurrum 
festival,  and  roasted  com,  also  in  the  Soma-mixtures  they 
introduced,  called  Soma-Try-ashira  in  the  Rigveda.^     These 
are  Gavashir,  Dadhyashir,  and  Yavashir  mixings,  with  milk 
(gava\  sour-milk  (dadhi),  and  barley  {jjavd)^  and  the  drink 
with  which  these  were  mixed  was  *  Madhu  **  or  mead,  for  the 
Ashvins  are   called   Madhu- vahana  and  Madhu- varna,  the 
bearers   of  Madhu   and   the   men   of  Madhu^s   caste,  also 
Madhuya,  Madhu-pa,  Madh-vi,  or  drinkers  of  Madhu,  and 
not  Soma-pa,  or  drinkers  of  Soma.*    They  pour  out  a  hundred 
casks  of  Madhu,^  and  they  are  called  to  come  and  drink  Madhu 
from  the  hand  of  their  Adhvaryu,  or  priest.^      These  Soma 
mixings  occupied  in  the  Soma  ritual  of  the  Ashvins  a  similar 
place  to  that  assigned  in  the  revised  service  to  the  Upasads, 
or  homages  to  the  three  seasons,  preceded  by  the  Pravargya, 
or  offering  of  heated  milk.^       These  are  offered  to  give  the 
sacrificer  a  celestial  body,  but  the  idea  which  underlay  the 
earlier  sacrifices  was  probably  that  of  sacrifices  to  the  deities 
of  the   seasons  sacred  to  the  sons  of  the  cow.     Thus  the 
mixing  with  milk,  Gavashir,  was  a  sacrifice  to  the  spring. 
The  Dadhyashir,  or  milk  clotted  with  heat,  to  the  summer, 
and  tlic  Yavashir,  or  barley  mixing,  was  to  the  barley  or 
autumn  season.    The  Soma  mixed  with  milk  was  only  offered 
to  Mitra-Varuna,  the  parent-gods  of  the  race,  and  the  Soma 
that  was  used  seems  to  liave  been  once  the  juice  or  dew 
pressed  from  the  Kusha  grass,  and  afterwards  tlie  juice  of  the 
Bur-tree  (Ficus   Indica)^  for   in   Katyayana,  x.  9,  30,  the 
priests  are  forbidden  to  give  a  sacrificer  of  the  Kshatriya  or 
Vaishya  caste  true  Soma,  but  to  substitute  for  it  the  juice  of 
the  Bur-tree  infused  into  milk.^   The  milk-mixing  was,  there- 

^  Rigveda,  v.  27.  5,  viii.  2,  7.      They  are  called  in  these  verses  Traya 
Indrasya  Somah  Sutasah,  the  three  kinds  of  Indra*s  Soma. 
2  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythologie,  p.  209.  ^  Ibid,  p.  239. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  117,  6.  '  Jbid,  x.  41,  3. 

^  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,  iii.  4.  4.  I.  ff.  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  104,  ff.  104, 

note  I. 
7  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythohgie,  pp.  66,  6t. 


ESSAY  III  243 

fore,  that  which  celebrated  the  birth  of  the  sons  the  Bur-tree. 
This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  the  offering  of  the  Dadhi- 
gharma,  or  mixed  hot  and  sour  milk,  which  is  offered  to  the 
Maruts  in  the  sacrifices  to  the  seasons  of  the  year  of  Praja- 
pati,  the  god  of  the  five  seasons  beginning  with  the  summer 
solstice.  The  Maruts,  the  wind-goddesses  coming  from  the 
West  Martu,  rule  the  fourth  of  these  seasons,  or  that  sacred 
to  the  mother  Magh,  and  the  Dadhi-gharma  is  offered  to 
them  close  to  the  Udumbara  post,  sacred,  like  the  Bur-tree, 
to  the  sons  of  the  fig-tree.^ 

The  Yavashir,  or  cup  mixed  with  barley,  one  of  those 
called  Gavashiram,  mixed  with  milk,  Manthinam  with  barley 
and  pure  Soma,  wliich  Indra  is  prayed  in  the  Rigveda  to- 
drink,*  is  the  Manthin  cup  made  with  barley  meal,*  and 
offered  to  the  sacred  bird  that  brought  the  Soma.  The 
Manthin  cup  means  the  creating  cup,  for  the  word  is  formed 
from  the  root  math  or  manth^  to  twirl  or  churn,  in  the  crea- 
tion of  fire,  and  it  is  the  cup  offered  to  the  messenger  of  the 
god  who  made  barley  the  heavenly  seed.  The  two  cups 
drawn  after  those  to  Mitra-Varuna,  and  called  the  Sukra  and 
Manthin  cups,^  are  said  to  be  offered  to  the  gods  of  the  Asli- 
uras,  called  Shanda  and  Marka.^  Marka  is  the  Mahrka  of 
the  Zendavesta,  and  means  death.^  The  rivalry  between  the 
Gridhra  or  vulture,  the  bird  of  death,  and  the  Ashvins,  each 
striving  to  drink  Soma  before  the  other,  is  referred  to  in  a 
stanza  of  the  Rigveda,  which  calls  on  worshippers  to  honour 
first  the  Ashvins  *  who  come  in  the  morning,  may  they  drink 
before  the  greedy  Gridhra.'  ^  Thus  the  Manthin  or  creating 
cup  in  honour  of  Marka,  is  the  cup  offered  to  the  god  whose 

*  Elggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,  iv.  3.  3,  13 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  336  note  2. 
'  Rigveda,  iii.  32,  2  ;  'Gavashiram  manthinam  indra  piba  somam.' 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brah,  iv.  2,  I,  2;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  278. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brah.  iv.  1,5,  i  ff.  The  Ashvina  Graha  is  placed  here  not 
in  the  order  in  which  it  was  offered.  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  272  note  3  ;  see  iv. 
2,  5>  12,  p.  312. 

'  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  iv.  2,  I,  1-4 ;  S.B.E.  pp.  278,  279. 

*  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  MythologU^  pp.  224,  225.  ^  Rigveda,  v.  77,  i. 


d 


244  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

messenger  is  the  bird  of  death,  the  devourer  of  dead  time. 
But  the  Manthin,  the  messenger  of  Marka  or  Mahrka,  the 
god  of  death,  is  also,  we  are  told,  the  moon,^  and  the  moon 
is  always  called  by  the  Hindus  the  abode  of  the  dead  ;  and 
hence  the  vulture,  the  bird  of  the  dead,  is  the  bird  of  the 
dying  or  crescent-moon.  Shanda  is  the  father-god  of  the 
people  called  in  the  Rigveda  Shandika,  or  sons  of  Shanda, 
whose,  king  called  Vrikadvaras,  or  the  door  (dvar)  of  the 
wolf  {vrika)y  was  slain  by  Indra.^  They  were  thus  the  ruling 
race  before  the  northern  wolf-god  entered  it,  and  the  cerebral 
letters  in  the  name  prove  it  to  be  of  Dravidian  origin.  It 
must  be  the  god  of  one  of  the  races  who  preceded  those  led 
by  the  Ashvins,  and  the  connection  shown  to  exist  between 
Shanda  and  Mahrka  and  the  sacred  bird,  is  shown  also  in 
the  Bahtauli  festival  of  the  Ho  and  Munda  Eols.  This 
festival  is  that  which,  among  the  rice-growing  Hos  and 
Mundas,  who  drink  no  milk,  corresponds  to  the  Kurrum  or 
barley  festival  of  the  Ooraons,  both  being  celebrated  in 
Srabon.  But  at  the  Bahtauli  festival  the  sacrifice  offered  is 
a  fowl  slain  by  each  cultivator,  who  strips  off  its  wings  with 
mysterious  rites,  and  inserts  them  in  a  cleft  bamboo,  one  of 
which  is  set  up  in  his  field  and  the  other  on  his  dung-heap.^ 
It  is  these  same  people  who  count  among  their  totems, 
Sandil,  meaning  the  full-moon,  and  Sandi,  a  plough,*  and 
who  calls  the  place  of  worship  of  the  village  headman, 
Chandil.^  It  was  these  people  who  looked  on  the  crescent- 
moon  as  the  bird  flying  to  and  from  the  creator,  and  bringing 
with  it  the  full-moon,  and  thus  Marka  and  Shanda  mean 
the  crescent-  and  full-moon,  which  were  worshipped  as  the 
gods  of  time,  before  the  coming  of  the  sons  of  the  barley,  the 
star-worshippers  who  made  the  star  Sirius,  called  the  rain- 
god,  Sukra,  the  star  which  begins  the  year  by  rising  at  the 

^  Eggeling,  Sa^.  Brah.  iv.  2,  I,  i  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  278. 

*  Rigveda,  ii.  30,  8. 

'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  i.  p.  329;  vol.  ii.  p.  104. 

*  Ibid,  vol.  ii.  p.  219.  ^  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  189. 


ESSAY  III  245 

summer  solstice,  when  the  rains  begin  in  Eastern  India ;  and 
it  is  Sukra,  the  successor  of  Shanda,  who  appears  in  the  Rig- 
veda  under  the  name  of  the  king  of  the  Shandika  Vrika- 
dvara:^,  for  he  is  the  door  (dvar)  through  which  the  heavenly 
wolf,  the  Naga-god  of  the  plough  (also  called  Vrika),  descends 
to  the  earth.    But  the  moon-bird  of  the  earliest  worshippers 
of  the  gods  of  time  still  remained  to  them  the  messenger  of 
the  gods,  but  she  was  not  the  bird  reappearing  and  disappear- 
ing every  month,  but  the  bird  of  the  West,  the  storm-bird 
which  announces  the  coming  of  the  rains.     It  was  the  bird 
of  the  winds  which  became  to  the  Eushika,  who  had  delocal- 
ised  the  parent-gods,  and  made  Mitra  Varuna  their  supreme 
god,  the  messengers  and  ambassadors  sent  to  declare  to  men 
the  changes  of  the  seasons,  and  to  be  the  angels  of  god  sent  to 
the  sons  of  the  tortoise.    It  was  the  spring  bird,  the  stork,  the 
Lat.  ciconia^  a  name  which  is  reproduced  in  the  Sanskrit  Sha- 
kuna,  who  told  the  Northern  races  of  the  coming  of  spring ; 
and  it  was  the  Vartika,  or  quail,  the  bird  of  the  Ashvins,  who 
comes  to  Northern  India  about  the  time  of  the  winter  solstice, 
which  told  them  of  the  birth  of  the  sun-god  of  the  new  year. 
But  though  the  migrating  birds  were  the  bringers  of  silent 
messages,  their  place  as  the  angels  sent  to  the  sons  of  the 
prophet-god  by  their  divine  father,  was  taken  by  the  raven, 
or  bird  of  the  black  thunder-cloud,  the  prophet-bird  of  the 
Northern  Finns,  and  the  bird  of  Odin,  the  god  of  know- 
ledge, the  northern  form  of  the  Hindu  Manu,  the  thinker. 
This  was  the  bird  of  the  magician,  sacred  to  the  Finnish 
god  Lempo,^  who  with  Hi-isi  and  Piru,  formed  the  triad  who 
created  the  primaeval  snake,  the  great  Naga.     Hi-isi,  the 
wooded-mountain  (m),  gave  life  to  it.     Eyes  were  given  to  it 
by  spells  by  Piru,  the  begetting-god,  the  Sclavonic  Per-kunas, 
the  thunder-god,  whose  name  appears  in  the  Dravidian  root, 
peru,  *  to  bear,^  and  in  one  of  the  Vedic  names  for  Soma, 

^  Abercromby,  *  Magic  Songs  of  the  Finns,'  Fo/^  Lore,  vol.  i.  No.  I.   March 
1890,  p.  33. 


246  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Apam  perub,  the  seed  or  germ  of  life  in  the  waters.^  Lempo 
formed  its  jaw-bone.^  It  was  the  speaking-bird  which  be- 
came the  Varaghna  bird,  the  sacred  bird  of  the  Magi,  who 
inspired  the  three  fathers  of  Zend  mythology,  Yima,  Thrae- 
taona,  and  Keresaspa;^  and  it  was  the  sacred  bird  of  Apollo, 
the  storm-god,  the  god  of  the  .^lian  race,  dwelling  in  the 
grove  tenanted  by  ravens,  at  Pegasae,  in  Thessaly.*  Tlie 
Varaghna  bird,  whose  name  means  he  who  smites  {aghna\ 
the  rain  {var\  is  the  miracle-working  prophet  who  smites 
the  mountain  rock,  and  makes  the  waters  gush  from  them, 
and  smites  the  air  with  his  magic  wand,  the  wonder-working 
word,  and  brings  the  rain  from  heaven.  He  is  the  bird  Vach 
(speech),  which  brings  Soma  to  earth.^  It  was  as  the  possessor 
of  the  fortunate  feather  of  the  raven,  the  bird  called  Varen- 
jana,  or  he  who  was  born  {jand)  in  the  four-cornered  Varena, 
the  garden  of  God,  that  Verethragna,  the  Zend  form  of  the 
Vedic  Vritrahan,  or  slayer  of  snakes,  was  able  to  kill  all  his 
enemies ;  ^  and  this  shows  us  the  double  aspect  of  the  rain- 
god  and  his  messenger-bird,  the  raven,  for  lie  is  both  the 
death-dealing  god  who  sends  pestilence — 

*  As  wicked  dew  as  ere  my  mother  brushed 
With  raveu's  feather  from  unwholesome  fen/ 

and  also  the   god  who  gives   life  and   inspires  the   truths 

spoken  by  his  servants.     And  it  is  as  the  bird  of  inspiration 

that  the  raven  feeds  Elijah  the  prophet,  whose  God  {El)  is 

JahJ  But  the  sacred  bird  assumed  his  primitive  aspect  as 
announcer  of  the  seasons  in  the  Kushite  mythology,  for  he 

^  Rigvcda,  x.  36,  8  ;  Peschel  und  Gcldner,  J'cdiscke  StudUn^  pp.  TJ^  81, 
89,91. 

-  Abcrcromby,  *  Magic  Songs  of  ihc  Finns  :  The  Origin  of  the  Snake,' 
Folk  Lore,  vol.  i.  No.  I,  March  1890,  p.  38. 

^  Darmeslcter,  Zendavcsta  Zamyad  Yost,  35-38;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  294, 
295. 

*  MUller,  Die  Dorier^  Bk.  ii.  chap.  i.  §§  2  and  3,  pp.  202-206. 
^  Eggeling*s  Sat,  Brdh.  iii.  6,  2,  2  ;   S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  149. 

*  Darmestetcr,  Zendavesta  Bahrdm  Kaj/,  35,  40 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p. 
241.  '  I  Kings  xvii.  6. 


ESSAY  III  247 

became  the  storm-bird,  the  Lugal-tudda  of  the  Akkadians; 
the  black  Bindo  bird  of  the  Song  of  Lingal,  the  bird  of 
the  Akkadian  west  wind,  Martu,  and  the  Maruts  of  the  Rig- 
veda  which  brings  the  rains.  Thus  he  is  the  bird  of  the 
Fathers  who  came  from  the  west,  the  bird  of  the  dead. 
And  it  is  in  this  way  that  the  vulture  Gridhra  became  the 
sacred  bird.  He  was  the  Lugal-tudda  of  the  Akkadians, 
and  one  of  the  forms  of  Shakuna  in  the  Rigveda,  a  bird 
who  eats  dead  bodies ;  ^  and  as  the  Shakuna  spoken  of  in 
this  passage  is  black,  and  it  is  also  spoken  of  in  another 
hymn  as  a  bird  who  screeches  good  omens,  and  a  singer  of  holy 
speech,*  we  see  that  the  biixl  who  was  first,  Ciconia,  the  stork, 
became  the  raven  of  the  magicians.  But  when  the  bird  of 
^eech  became  the  bird  who  brought  the  rains,  he  becomes  a 
bird  whose  migrations  coincide  with  their  coming.  This 
bird  in  the  Kushika  empire  of  India  is  the  large  carrion  eat- 
ing bird  the  adjutant,  which  always  arrives  with  the  first 
downfall  of  rain.  He  is  the  Zend  Vareshava,  the  son  of 
Danu,  the  judge  in  the  Zendavesta,^  but  in  the  Zend  lands 
which  are  outside  the  sphere  of  the  adjutant'^s  migrations, 
he  becomes  the  vulture,  the  Gridhra  of  the  Rigveda.  This 
is  the  vulture  bird  of  Thraetaona,  called  Vafra  Navaza,  mean- 
ing the  freshly-fallen  snow,*  whose  melting  gave  life  to  the 
rivers  of  Asia  Minor,  the  fatherland  of  the  myth,  for  it  was 
this  vulture  which  bore  Thraetaona  to  the  Rangha  or  Tigris 
when  he  went  to  conquer  Azi  Dahaka,  the  king  of  Bauri  or 
Babylon,  the  devouring  snake  of  the  burning  summer,  and 
which  also  carried  the  chariot  of  Kavi  Usa,  the  goat-father  of 
the  Kusliite  race.^  In  the  next  vei-se  of  the  Bahram  Yast  to 
that  telling  how  the  vulture  can'ied  Thraetaona  Verethragna 

*Sayce,  Bibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  293.     Rigveda,  x.  16,  6. 
Here  the  Shakuna  is  called  Krishnas,  the  black  bird. 
2  Rigveda,  ii.  42,  I,  3 ;  43,  1-3. 
'  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Zamydd  Yofty  41  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  296. 

*  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta AbdnYast^  61,  63 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  68,  69. 

*  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Afrtn  Paighambur  Zartushty  4  ;  Bahram  Vasty 
39>  40,  41-2  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  232,  241,  242,  326. 


248  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

is  compared  to  the  sacred  bird  which  is  here  called  the  Saena 
bird,  and  the  big  clouds  full  of  water  that  beat  the  mountains, 
and  in  the  fii-st  of  his  eight  avatars  he  is  ^  a  strong  beautiful 
wind/  Thus,  we  find  the  Saena  bird  identified  with  Thrae- 
taona'^s  vulture  Vafra  Navaza,  the  freshly  fallen  snow,  and 
Shyena,  the  Sanskrit  form  of  Zend  Saena,  comes  from  the 
root  shya^  meaning  to  curdle,  to  coagulate,  also  to  cool,  to 
freeze.  Thus  as  Thraetaona's  vulture  brought  freshly  fallen 
snow  to  the  mountains  where  the  Tigi'is  rises,  so  the  Shyena 
bird  who  brought  Soma  to  earth,^  brought  the  snows  of  the 
rainy  season  to  the  Himalayas.  But  this  bird,  before  it 
came  as  the  rain-wind,  came  as  the  burning  blasts  fi*om  the 
west,  and  as  the  dark  copper  sky  from  which  they  issue  and 
temporarily  kill  all  life  in  the  summer  of  North-western 
India.  It  is  this  brassy  sky  which  is  the  cloud  which  will 
not  give  up  the  rain,  the  enemies  of  Indra  called  Shushna 
Na-muchi  and  Azi  Dahaka.  It  is  also  this  rainless  cloud 
which  appears  in  Indian  historical  legends  in  two  forms,  as 
Push-kara  the  gambler,  the  maker  {kara)  of  Push,  who  in 
the  story  of  Nala  and  DamayantI,  wins  from  Nala  his  king- 
dom at  play,  and  then  strips  him  who  is  the  god  of  the 
ordinary  coui*se  or  channel  (nala  or  nullah)  of  nature,  bare,- 
and  as  Shakuna,  who  has  been  changed  from  the  stork  to 
the  rain-bird,  and  is,  in  the  story  of  the  Mahiibharata,  the 
brother  of  the  Kauravya  tortoise- motlier  Gandharl.  It  is 
he  wlio  causes  the  ruin  and  exile  of  the  Pandavas  by  winning 
from  Yudishthira,  the  eldest  of  the  five  brother,  his  wealth 
and  kingdom  at  a  gambling-match.*^  But  while  Shakuna, 
the  gaml)ler,  is  the  destroying  bird  of  summer,  his  sister 
GandliarT  is  the  fructifying  bird  who  laid  the  world'*s  egg, 
whence  the  Kauravya,  sons  of  the  tortoise  {kaur\  were  bom. 
She  was  the  wife  of  Dhritarashtra,  the  blind  king,  whose  name 
means   *  He  who  holds  the  kingdom  (together),  that  is,  the 

1  Rigveda,  iv.  26,  4-7 ;  27,  3,  4. 

'  Mahabharata  Vana  [Naio-pakkyana)  Parva,  lii.-lxxix.  pp.  157-234. 

*  Ibid.  Sabha  {Anudyiita)  Parva,  Ixxiv-lxxxi. 


ESSAY  III  249 

house-pole  of  the  house  whence  the   Eushite  race  was  to 
issue.     Gandharrs  egg  was  laid  in  the  city  of  Hastinapore, 
the  city  of  the  eight  {asta)j  also  called  Pushkala-vati  or  the 
city  of  Push-kara  on  the  river  Swat,  in  the  land  of  the 
mother-mountain  of  the  East.^     When  laid,  it  was  like  a 
ball  of  flesh,  as  hard  as  iron;   the  transformed  symbol  of 
the  mother  mountain.     It  was  two  years  in  her  womb,  and 
was  by  the  orders  of  the  Rishi  Vyasa,  the  uniter,  whom  I 
have  shown  to  be  the  alligator  Maga,  sprinkled  or  sanctified 
by  the  water  of  life.     It  then  divided   into  one  hundred 
parts,  like  the  mother  Hekate  (the  hundred),  each  about  the 
size  of  the  thumb,  which  parts  were  the  Naga  snakes,  which 
formed  the  Angiiineum  ovum^  or  snake\s  egg  worshipped  by 
the  Druids,^  and  hung  up  in  the  temple  of  Hercules  in  Tyre, 
encircled  by  the  Agathodaemon,  or  the  good  snake  that  gives 
the  rain.     These  snakes  were  put  into  clarified  butter,  the 
divine  seed  of  the  bull  race,  and  kept  carefully  covered  for 
two  years,  when  one  hundred  sons  and  a  daughter  called 
Dushala  were  bom.^     This  story  tells  us  how  the  mother- 
bird  Grandhari,  like  the  ewe-mother  Ida,  gave  birth  to  the 
snake-bom  sons  of  the  bull,  and  this  appears  in  another  form 
in  the  Akkadian  myth  which  tells  us  how  the  winged  bull 
was  engendered  by  the  storm-bird,  Ungal-turda.*     It  was 
this  winged   bull   which,  as   the  Kerubi,  the  bright  ones, 
guarded  the  gates  of  Assyrian   temples,  and   became  the 
Cherubim  of  the   tlews.       It  is    also  this  same   genealogy 
which  appears  in  the  deification  of  Push,  the  son  of  the 
gambler  Push-kara,  the  maker  of  Push.     His  name  means 
he  who  makes  the  plants  to  grow  (pus).     He  appears  in 
Akkadian  as  Pu,  and  the  ideogram  of  Pu,  3[,  means  the 
lord  of  the  watery  enclosure  {pu\^  that  is  to  say,  the  rain- 

^  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India^  p.  50. 

^  Encyclopadia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  *  Druidism,'  vol.  vii.  p.  47 7, 

'  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sambhava)  Parva,  cxv.-cxvii.  pp.  337-342. 

*  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic ^  chap,  xii,  p.  171,  note  8.     Sayce,  Hihbert 
Lectures  for  1887,  App.  iv.  xviii,  p.  9-22,  495. 

•  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary y  Nos.  223,  470. 


250  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

bull  Indra,  and  he  and  Indra  are  called  in  the  Rigveda 
brothers.^  It  is  a  similar  transformation  to  that  of  Gand- 
hari,  the  layer  of  the  egg,  whence  the  Eushite  race  was 
born,  for  Gandharl  means  she  who  wets  or  waters  (dhdri) 
the  Gan  or  enclosure,  that  is,  the  mother-rivers  of  the  race 
bom  from  her,  of  which  the  chief  is  the  Gan-gu,  from 
whom  the  Gan,  the  garden  of  God,  was  bom.  It  was 
on  their  banks  that  the  Kushite  kings  established  the 
wealthiest  kingdoms  of  their  widespread  empire,  and  it  was 
these  sons  of  barley  {yava)  who  changed  the  parent  gods, 
Puse,  the  alligator,  and  Maga,  the  witch-mother,  into  Pushan, 
the  bull,  and  Ida,  who  was  first  the  sheep  and  then  the 
mother-cow,  the  Egyptian  Isis.  It  was  she  who  was  the 
year-cow  made  by  the  Ribhus,  whose  son,  the  year-calf,  was, 
we  are  told  in  the  Rigveda,  engendered  by  the  thought  of 
the  heavenly  spirit  which  filled  her  womb  with  the  life- 
giving  mist,  the  water  of  life.^  The  connection  between 
this  symbolism  and  the  bird-myth  is  shown  by  the  Eg3rptian 
Nunet,  the  consort  of  Nun,  the  life-giving  spirit  of  the  mist, 
the  supreme  god  both  of  the  Egyptians  and  Akkadians,  who 
is  depicted  as  a  vulture.^  It  was  this  mother  storm-bird 
which  brings  the  rain  wlio  became  the  zu-bird,  or  bird  of 
wisdom  {zii)y  of  the  Akkadians,  who  revolted  against  Mul-lil, 
lord  of  sorcery  (Zi/),*  seized  the  tablets  of  destiny  and  be- 
came the  ruler  of  heaven  in  the  mother-mountain  of  the 
East,^  she  who  was  the  Sin-amra  or  moon-falcon,  or  the 
Si-murgh,  that  is  Sin-murgh,  the  moon-bird,  who  in  later 
mythology  took  the  place  of  the  Saena  bird  and  Amru  of 
the  Zendavesta.^     She  was  the  Egyptian  Dhu-ti,  the  god 

1  Rigveda,  vi.  55,  5.  »  /did.  i.  164,  8. 

'  H.  Brugsch,  /Religion  uttd  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^-Kgyptery  p.  1 1 6. 

*  Say cey  If iddgri  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  ii.,  iii.,  iv.,  pp.  103,  145,  281. 
Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary ^  No.  306.  Lil  means  a  storm  of  dust, 
demon-ghosts,  sorcery. 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  pp.  297-299. 

*  Darmesteler,  Zendavesta  Fravardin  Ya§t^  109;  Rasha  Yoft,  17;  S.B.E. 
vol.  xxiii.  p.  210  note  I,  p.  173  note  i ;  S.B.E.  vol.  iv.  p.  54  note  2. 


ESSAY  III  261 

i^ti)  Dhu  or  Zu,  the  moon-god  with  the  ibis  beak  who  holds 
the  fortunate  feather,  the  pen  with  which  he  records  the 
events  marking  the  lapse  of  time.     The  egg  of  this  bird  is 
the  Egyptian  ankh  borne  by  the  gods  as  the  sign  of  life 
into  which  the  life-giving  spirit  is  infused  by  the 
fire-drill.      This  impregnation   is   distinctly  de-         /p\ 
picted  on  the  second  vignette  of  the  great  papyrus     ^^^  cLp 
of  Ani,  illustrating  the  Book  of  the  Dead,  where         "1  j 
the  two  mothers  Isis,  the  cow  and  fire-mother,  I 

and  Nebt-hat  the  mistress  (nebt)  of  the  house 
ih(xt%  the  earth-mother,  stand  gazing  on  the  Tat,  the  form 
of  the  ankh  represented  as  the  creating  spirit,  and  in  it 
ivas  the  fire-drill,  furnished  with  the  cross-bar  by  which  it 
'was  turned  when  generating  the  life-giving  heat.  This  is 
overshadowed  by  the  arms  of  the  mountain-mother  spring- 
ing from  the  egg  of  the  a7iJch,  and  bearing  on  her  ten  finger- 
tips the  ten  lunar  months  of  gestation,  the  red  egg  or  the 
<louble  tortoise  quickened  by  the  seed  of  the  life-giving  fire, 
and  waiting  to  bring  forth  its  progeny,  the  red  man,  till  the 
sun,  which  already  warms  it  with  its  rays,  has  fully  emerged 
from  the  shades  of  night.  This  pictorial  simile  is  verbally 
repeated  in  the  genealogy  of  the  nine  gods  of  life  bom  from 
Tum,  the  sun  of  night,  the  creating  god  of  the  Akkadians  and 
Egyptians,  the  Tamas,  or  darkness,  of  the  Hindus,  which  in  the 
Rigveda  overarches  the  motlier- waters  whence  the  rivers  rise.^ 
His  children  were  Shu,  meaning  *he  who  dries  (with  heat),^* 
that  is,  the  engendering  fire-god  and  Tafnit  the  effluence,^ 
the  conceiving  and  child-bearing  mother.  From  them  were 
bom  Zeb  or  Geb  the  convexity,*  the  tortoise  earth  and  his 
consort  Nut,  whose  names  means  the  flood  (iit\  the  ocean  or 
the  binding-chain.^    She  bears  a  water-jar  on  her  head,  and  is 

^  Rigveda,  i.  54,  la 

'  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologic  der  Alien  ^gypter,  p.  31. 

'  Ibid,  573,  derives  Taf-nit  from  T/n^  effluence. 

*  Ibid,  576,  from  gbdy  meaning  bending  or  convexity. 

*  H.  Bnigsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  *€.gypier^  pp.  85,  338, 
^3,  607,  608. 


252  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

called  at  Thebes  Api,  the  water-goddess,  and  she  also  appears 
as  Nun-et,  the  vulture,  wife  of  Nun.  It  is  this  myth  of  the 
heated  air  begetting  the  convex  earth,  tlie  child  of  rain  and 
the  ocean-mother  who  lays  the  world's  egg,  which  appears 
in  another  form  in  the  Hindu  deification  of  Krishanu,. 
the  god  (aria)  who  draws  (karsh)  tlie  heavenly  bow  and 
guards  the  Soma,  or  water  of  life.  It  is  this  bow  which 
spans  the  egg  in  the  arikh  and  encircles  it  as  the  Agatho- 
dsemon  encircled  the  world  egg  sacred  to  the  Tynan 
Hercules,  and  it  is  in  Genesis  named  as  the  sign  of  the 
rain-father,  the  great  god  Yah.^  It  was  the  sons  of  Greb, 
who,  as  the  sons  of  Kusli,  the  tortoise,  were  the  Kushite 
rulers  of  the  empire  whose  centre  was  the  mother-mountain 
of  the  East.  This  is  described  in  the  Book  of  the  Dead  as 
'  The  emei'ald-mountain  of  the  East,'  2  i\^q  home  of  Sebek, 
*the  Maga  crocodile,"*  below  which  lies  the  snake  called 
Am-hah,  the  '  Shesh-nag  of  the  Hindus,**  who  stands  erect 
*  and  looks  at  the  sun-god.""  And  it  is  in  the  land  of  this 
mountain  *  reaching  on  the  south  to  the  sea  of  the  Charo- 
bird  and  on  the  north  to  that  of  the  Ro-goose,  that  the 
emerald  sycamore,  whence  Ra,  the  sun-god,  spmng,  grows.*" 
The  land  of  Aron  '  begirt  with  iron  walls,"*  like  the  Malabar 
coasts  of  India,  '  where  com  is  seven  ells  long,  its  ears  thret% 
and  stalks  four,  reaped  by  spirits  of  the  Eastern  souls, 
eight  ells  long,  where  is  Horus  the  calf,  the  god  Sothis, 
the  morning  star,  Venus."*  ^  That  is  the  star  called  Magha- 
bu,  or  son  of  Maglia,  by  the  Hindus.  It  was  in  this  land  of 
India,  the  land  of  barley,  where  time  was  reckoned  by  lunar 
periods  of  fourteen  days,  tlie  aggregates  of  the  lengths  of  the 
ears  of  com,  and  divided  into  the  three  seasons  of  the  stalk, 
ear,  and  ripened  grain,  that  the  com  was  reaped  by  the 
followers  of  the  Eight,  the  symbol  of  the  united  Swastikas, 

^  Gen.  ix.  13. 

*  H.  Bnigsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  /Egypter,  p.  588  ;  Book 
of  the  Deadj  pp.  108,  ill. 

'  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  umi  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^gypUr,  pp.  175,  177  ;. 
Book  of  the  Deady  chap.  109. 


ESSAY  III  253 

forming  the  four  triangles  of  the  tortoise-earth  and  the 
-eight  tribes  of  united  Gonds.  It  was  there,  under  the 
emerald  green  sycamore,  *the  Egyptian  fig-mulberry,  and 
the  Hindu  Banyan  tree  ^  whence  Ra  moves  through  cloud- 
land,^  that  the  mother-bird  Naga-ga,  meaning  the  great 
cackler,  the  goose-mother  Bes-bes,  Seb,  or  Smenu,  laid  the 
world's  egg,*  and  became  the  Hindu  goose-mother  Ur-vashi, 
the  mother  of  Ayu,  the  ages  of  historical  time.  It  was  in 
this  land  that  the  king  or  judge,  the  Danu,  who  did  justice 
by  the  inspiration  of  God,  was  added  to  the  ruling  powers 
of  an  earlier  age,  the  tribal  chief,  the  village  hecidman, 
the  provincial  ruler,  and  the  inspired  magician  or  magic 
priest ;  and  it  was  then  that  was  formed  the  conception  of 
the  confederated  kingdom  formed  of  six  dependent  and 
allied  states  surrounding  the  seventh  i-uling  state  in  the 
centre.  It  is  this  conception  which  is  worked  out  in  the 
six  kingdoms  surrounding  the  central  kingdom  of  Jambu- 
dwipa,  into  which  they  divided  India,  and  in  the  six  king- 
doms of  Iran  round  Khvaniras  or  Hvaniratha,  the  land 
ruled  by  Susi-nag,  the  original  father-god  of  the  model 
state.  This  form  of  kingdom  still  survives  in  those  which 
form  the  tributary  states  of  Chota  Nagpore,  for  in  all  of 
these  the  central  province  is  ruled  by  the  king  and  those 
surrounding  it  by  his  subordinate  chiefs. 

But  before  proceeding  to  show  how  the  sons  of  Dan  ex- 
tended their  rule  and  influence  over  countries  so  wide  apart 
as  India  and  Egypt,  I  must  first  complete  the  proof  of  the 
birth  and  growth  of  the  race  in  its  successive  stages.  I  have 
shown  how  the  conception  of  the  descent  from  the  father- 
bull  and  the  mother-cow  grew  out  of  those  of  the  ewe-mother 
and  the  mother-bird,  and  I  must  now  trace  the  marks  of 
evolutionary  eridence  shown  in  the  origin  and  historical  pro- 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alten  ^gypter^  p.  173;  Book 
of  the  Dead,  pp.  109-3,  *49"7' 

'  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alten  ^gypter^  p.  172  ;  Book 
of  the  Deadf  pp.  54,  i. 


254  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

gress  of  the  sons  of  the  bull.  Tliey  are  called  by  the  Akka- 
dians the  Lu-gud,  or  race  (lu)  of  the  bull  (gud)^  the  sons  of 
Gad  of  the  Jews,  who  gave  to  Assyria  its  earliest  name  of 
Gutium  or  bull'^s  land,  and  founded  in  India  the  race  of  the 
Gautama,  the  sons  of  Rohini,  the  red  cow.  They  were  the 
i-ed  race  who  succeeded  to  and  worked  with,  the  yellow  race. 
Their  father-god  was  the  wild  bull,  whose  sign  on  the  Telloh 

monuments  is  \y  ^      This  is  the  three-eyed  bull,  the  Semi- 

ramis  or  Samirdus  of  Babylon,  a  bisexual  form  of  Istar, 
described  in  a  legend  quoted  by  Lenormant,  as  having  three 
eyes  and  two  horns,  who  succeeded  Nimrod  in  Babylon,  and 
invented  weights  and  measures,  and  the  art  of  silk-weaving.^ 
This  bull-god  with  the  three  eyes,  or  the  three  seasons  of  the 
year,  is  the  patronymic  god  of  the  Gaurian  race  of  Telloh  or 
Lu-gash,  whose  god  was  Gud-Ia,  or  the  bull  (/a),  and  who  in 
India  call  Gauri,  the  wild-cow  {bos  gauros)^  their  mother- 
goddess.  They  made  their  god  Shiva,  the  shepherd-god,  the 
three-eyed  god,^  and  their  king  Shishupala,  meaning  the 
nourisher  of  children,  the  king  of  Chedi,  and  chief-general 
of  Jariisandha,  was  bom  with  three  eyes  and  four  hands. 
It  was  he  who  was  slain  by  Krishna  with  the  discus,*  the 
ring  or  completed  year  of  five  seasons  recurring  in  regular 
order,  which  developed  into  the  limar  year  of  thirteen 
months  of  twenty-eight  days  each.  These  sons  of  the  wild- 
bull  were  among  the  Jews  the  six  sons  and  one  daughter  of 
Leah,  the  wild-cow  who  had  tender  eyes,  a  euphuism  for 
the  three  eyes  of  the  wild-cow,  and  it  was  they  who  led  the 
sons  of  Gad  and  Ashiir  in  the  paths  of  knowledge,  where  they 
learned  that  the  laws  of  Nature  were  unalterable  and  unchang- 
ing, and  made  the  sons  of  Levi,  the  teachers  of  the  law,  their 

*  Amiaud  et  Mechinscau,  Tableau   Compark  des  Ecritures  Babylonienues 
et  AssyriemieSf  No.  49,  p.  19. 

-  Lenormant,  Chaldiran  Magic^  p.  396,  note  2. 

*  Mahabharala  Shalya  Parva,  xlviii.  p.  193. 

*  Ibid.  Sabha  {Shishupala  Badha)  Parva,  xl-xlv. 


ESSAY  III  255 

national  instructors  and  priests,  and  the  sons  of  Judah,  the 
fire-god,  their  rulers.  And  the  union  between  Judah  and 
Levi  is  marked  by  the  marriage  of  Aaron,  the  high-priest 
of  the  tribe  of  Levi,  whose  name  means  the  Ark  of  God, 
with  the  daughter  of  Amminadab  and  sister  of  Nahshon, 
prince  of  Judah.^  These  teachers  of  the  law  were  the  suc- 
cessors of  the  earlier  Asipu,  who  were  half-magicians  and  half- 
dreamers.  But  the  complete  history  of  the  rule  of  the  Kushite 
Nagas  and  their  successors  can  only  be  worked  out  in  that  of  the 
Turvashu-Yadu,  the  sons  of  Yayati  and  Devayani,  the  twin- 
brethren  of  the  sons  of  Sharmishtha,  the  Druhyu  Anu,  and 
Puru.  The  eldest,  but  subsequently  the  subordinate,  of  the 
twin-races,  were  the  Tur-vashu,  who  made  the  Tur  or  pole 
their  god.  But  this  was  not  the  Gumi,  or  house-pole,  but 
the  meridian-pole  of  the  earth,  which  joined  the  mother- 
mountain  with  the  overarching  heaven.  It  was  they  who 
made  Varuna,  the  dark  sky  of  night,  the  house  of  Kush,  the 
heavenly  tent  lit  with  the  stars  which  glittered  on  its  walls, 
and  which  were  led  by  the  twin-stars,  the  Ashvins.  They,  in 
the  Rigveda,  are  represented  as  drawn  by  stallion  asses,^  as 
their  predecessors  were  led  by  the  dog.  They  utterly  repudiated 
the  belief  of  the  fire-  and  dog-worshippers  in  the  sanctity 
of  emasculated  priests,  and  in  the  Vara  or  Garden  of  God, 
tilled  by  Yima,  the  twin-  {yam)  son  of  Vivanghvadt,  the 
Sanskrit  Vivasvat,  no  impotent,  lunatic,  deformed,  or  leprous 
man  was  allowed  to  dwell.^  And  their  leader  in  India  was 
the  three-eyed  Shishu-pala,  the  nourisher  {paid)  of  children. 
But  these  asses  of  the  Ashvins  are  the  totemistic  fathers  of 
the  Ooraons  of  Chota  Nagpore,  the  first  growers  of  barley,  for 
none  of  them  will  kill  an  ass.*  And  all  Ooraons  will  tell  you 
that  their  race  comes  from  Ruhidas,^  the  land  of  the  red  race, 

*  Exod.  vi.  25  ;  Numbers  vii.  12,  where  the  prince  of  Judah  is  called  Nah- 
shon, the  son  of  Amminadab.  ^  Rigveda,  i.  34,  9,  116,  2  ;  iii.  57,  5. 

'  Darmesteter,  Ztndavesta  VendJddd  Fargard,  ii.  29,  37  ;  S.  B.  E.  vol.  iv. 
pp.  17,  19.  *  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ,  vol.  ii.  p.  148. 

^  This  statement  has  often  been  made  to  me  by  Ooraons,  and  it  is  usually 
thought  that  it  means  that  they  come  from  Behar,  the  country  of  which  the 


«56  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  people  and  country  of  Syria,  called  Rotou  by  the  Egyp- 
tians.    It  is  this  ass-bom  race  that  we  find  in  the  thirty  sons 
of  Jair  of  the  land  of  Gilead,  the  son  of  Manasseh  and  judge 
of  Israel,  who  rode  on  thirty  asses,  the  thirty  days  of  the  solar 
month,  and  in  the  other  Manassite  and  Gileadite  judges  of 
Israel,  Gideon,  and  Jephthah.i    It  was  Midas,  the  father-king 
of  the  land  of  the  Phrygians,  whence  the  first  leaders  of  the 
Semite  confederacy  emigrated,  who  had  asses^  ears.     In  the 
Mahabharata,  Ucchaihshravas,  meaning  the  horse  with  long 
ears,  that  is  to  say,  the  ass,  is  the  father  of  horses,  and  the 
horse  of  Indra,  bom  from  the  churning  of  the  waters  of  the 
ocean,  as  Amrita,  the  water  of  life.^    It  was  about  the  coloiu* 
of  the  hairs  in  this  horse's  tail  that  Kadru,  the  mother  of 
the  Naga  snakes,  and  Vinata,  the  mother  of  the  two  egg-bom 
sons  of  Kashyapa  Aruna,  the  fire-drill,  and  Gadura,  the  bull 
of  light,  quarrelled.     The  story  of  the  birth  of  this  horse  as 
the  bearer  of  the  Amrita,  is  a  mythical  description  of  the 
bringing  up  of  the  rains  from  the  ocean  by  the  heavenly  ass. 
It  is  this  divine  ass  which  is  called  in  Bundahish  the  three- 
legged  ass,  that  is,  the  leader  of  the  year  with  three  seasons, 
the  great  purifier  of  the  water  of  the  ocean,  who  made  all 
women  pregnant,  and  was  the  cliief  helper  of  Tistrya  Sirius, 
the  rain-star,  in  bringing  the  water  from  the  ocean  to  the 
eartli.^     It  was  these  dwellers  on  the  borders  of  the  deserts 
of  Arabia  and  the  Euphrates  valley,  the  home  of  the  wild 
ass,  who  first  studied  the  stars  they  used  as  guides  through  the 
pathless  deserts  they  had  to  cross  on  their  trading  journeys, 
and  who  thus  found  that  their  apparent  motion  gave  better 
means  of  marking  the  lapse  of  time  than  those  given  by  re- 
membering the  numl>ers  of  recurring  changes  of  the  moon. 
It  was  this  belief  which  led  them  to  map  the  heavens,  and 

principal  fortress  is  Rohtas-gurh,  on  the  Kymore  hills,  but  this  again  is  only 
a  stage  on  their  journey  from  Syria,  the  land  of  the  Rotou  or  red  race,  the 
home  of  the  wild  ass. 

^  Judges  X.  3-6  ;  Numl)ers  xxxii.  39-42  ;  Judges  vi.  15  ;  xi.  7. 

*  Mahabharata  Adi  {Astika)  Parva,  xx.-xxiii. 

^  West,  Bundahish^  xix.  i-ii  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  pp.  67-69. 


ESSAY  III  257 

ivide  it  into  the  four  quarters,  east,  west,  south,  and 
Lorth,  which  had  already  been  observed  on  earth  as  those 
rhence  the  winds,  called  by  the  fire- worshippers  the  four 
^^Bacred  hounds,^  came.  The  stars  of  the  four  quarters  were 
^"^liose  of  the  Zend  cosmogony,  (1)  Tistrya  Sirius,  the  star  of 
the  East  that  brings  the  rain.  (2)  Vanant,  the  star  Aquila, 
)r  the  Eagle,  the  divine  mother-bird,  the  star  of  the  West, 
'^which  has  in  it  the  seed  of  the  plants,  the  star  of  the  sons  of 
^the  fig-tree.^  (3)  Satavaesa,  the  star  of  the  South,  the  hun- 
<lred  (said)  creators  (vaesa) ;  that  is,  the  hundred  sons  of  the 
tortoise-mother,  the  constellation  Argo,  the  heavenly  ship 
Ma,  of  the  Akkadians,  which  pushes  the  waters  forward  or 
controls  the  tides  in  the  Persian  Gulf,^  just  as  its  chief  star, 
Canopus,  called  Agastiya  by  the  Hindus,  drinks  up  the 
waters  of  the  ocean,  which  were  again  replenished  by  Ganga, 
the  great  river.*  This  star  Agastya  was  the  star  of  the 
Indian  Dravidian  races,  the  star  which,  in  the  Rigveda, 
brought  the  son  of  Mitra-Varuna  and  Urvashi,  the  Vashish- 
tha,  or  most-creating  fire  forth  from  the  lightning  ;^  that  is  to 
say,  he  made  the  leader  of  the  stars  the  supreme  god  in  place 
of  the  storm-god.  (4)  The  Seven  Stars  of  the  North,  the 
Hapto-iringas,  the  seven  bulls,  which  we  call  the  Great  Bear. 
But  in  this  selection  of  the  ruling  stars,  as  in  all  other 
ancient  systems  of  teaching,  we  find  a  cosmological  myth,  and 
the  clew  to  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  Arab  doctrine  of  the  Pole. 
They,  as  Abu  Rihan  (Alberunl)  tells  us,  always  called  the 
North  Pole  the  Great  Bear,  and  the  South  Pole,  Canopus.® 

*  Sayce,  Hibbtrt  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  288. 

'  Dannesteter,  Zendavesta  Tir  Yasty  32,  1/  Strozah,  i.  13 ;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxiii.  pp.  9,  92,  97.  But  see  Essay  iv.  p.  332,  where  I  show  that  in  the  first 
stellar  mythology  Vanant  was  the  constellation  Corvus. 

'  See  description  of  how  Sataves  controls  the  tides  in  the  Sea  Vourukasha, 
the  sea  of  Oman,  V^Qsi^sBundakish,  ii.  7;  xiii.  12  ;  Darmesteter's  Zendavesta 
Vendidad Fargatd,  v.  18,  19;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  pp.  12,  44;  iv.  p.  54. 

•*  Mahabharata  Vana  {Tirtha- Yatra)  Parva,  ciii.-cix.  pp.  324-340. 

'  Rigveda,  vii.  33, 10,  11. 

'  Sacbau's  Alberuni's  India,  vol.  i.  chap.  xxii.  p.  240. 

17 


A 


258  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Thus  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  the  seven  bulls,  and 
the  star  Canopus,  were  the  eight  stars  forming  the  fire-drill, 
or  the  pole  which  became  the  father  of  tlie  hundred  sons  or 
stars  of  Satavaesa,  the  mother-ship,  Argo,  the  Nagas  which 
peopled  the  fields  of  heaven,  called  the  Nagkslietra,  or  field 
of  the  Nags.  The  two  stars,  the  star  of  the  East,  Sinus, 
Tishtrya,  or  Sukra ;  and  the  star  of  the  West,  Aquila  or  Van- 
ant,  were  the  bringers  of  the  generating  rain  sent  to  earth  by 
Satavaesa,  and  the  points  of  the  cross-bar  which  turned  the 
drill-stick  of  the  North  round  in  the  Southern  socket.  The 
eight  stars  of  the  drill  and  the  two  of  the  cross-bar,  were  the 
ten  lunar  months  of  gestation  which  preceded  the  birth  of 
the  sons  of  Satavaesa,  the  Hindu  mother-star,  Magha,  which 
aften%'ards  became  the  planet  Venus.  It  was  under  this  con- 
stellation that  Yudishthira,  the  son  of  Dharma,  the  fixed 
law  of  natural  order,  was  bom.^  He  was  the  eldest  of  the 
Piindavas,  bom  under  the  influence  of  the  moon-goddess,  and 
the  first  season  of  the  year  of  righteousness,  the  year  of  five 
seasons,  the  five  Pandava  brothers.  It  was  the  Ashvins,  the 
stars  Gemini,  immediately  to  the  east  of  the  Pole,  who  were 
the  Adhvaryu,  or  priests  of  the  gods,  who  twirled  round  the 
fire-drill  of  the  Northern  Pole,  while  the  seven  Maruts,  or 
South-western  winds,  held  the  other  end  of  the  rope  of 
destiny,  and  who  thus,  as  they  are  said  to  do,  in  the  Vayu 
Puriina,  *  drive  the  stars  round  the  pole,  which  are  bound  to 
it  by  ties  invisible  to  man.  They  move  round  like  the  beam 
in  the  oil-press,  for  its  bottom  is,  as  it  were,  standing  still, 
while  its  end  is  moving  round.**  ^ 

The  ties  which  bind  the  stars  round  the  pole,  and  conse- 
crate it  as  the  necklace  of  the  bell-god  Gargara,  consecrates 
the  Gond  god  Pharsi  Pen,  are,  as  we  are  told  in  the  Vishnu 
Dharma,  the  constellation  of  the  Alligator,  called  by  its  Vedic 
name  of 'Shimshumrira,the  prototype  of  that  now  called  Draco. 
It  is  described  as  consisting  of  fourteen  stars,  the  fourteen  days 

^  Sachau's  Alberuni's  India,  vol.  i.  chap.  xlv.  pp.  389,  390. 
*  Ibid,  vol.  i.  chap.  xxii.  p.  241. 


ESSAY  III  259 

of  the  lunar  periods,  which  drive  the  stars  round  the  pole, 
and  of  these  fourteen  stars,  the  Ashvins  or  physicians  of  the 
gods,  the  stars  of  Gemini,  who  were  first  the  twins  Ushasa- 
nakta,  day  and  night,  are  the  hands  ;  and  Marlchi,  which,  as  I 
shall  show,  is  the  father-star  of  the  Great  Bear,  is  one  of  the 
tail-stars.^     This  cosmogony  of  the  Turanian  sons  of  the  Tur, 
^which  makes  the  great  Nag  the  creator,  the  infuser  of  the 
soul  of  life  into  the  heavenly  fire-drill  turned  by  his  priests, 
is  that  which  is  said  in  the  Rigveda  to  be  the  work  of  the 
-Ashvins.     They  made  Chyavana,  the  mountain-  or  shaking- 
^d,  the  fire-god,  imprisoned,   like   the  Cyclops  of  Greek 
in)rthology,  beneath  the  mountain,  young  again ;  ^  and  the 
fiill    meaning  of  this  is  made  clear  by  the  stories  in  the 
Mahabharata  and   Brahmanas,   which   tell  how   Chyavana, 
"the  son  of  Bhrigu,  the  earthly  fire-drill,  pierced   his  eyes 
in   the   forest;   that    is,   became   the  blind    house-pole    of 
"the  forest  tribes,  and  was,  like  the  dead  volcano,  looked  on 
with  irreverence  and  pelted  with  clods ;  that  is,  made  the 
house-pole  of  the  house  built  with  clods  by  the  cow-herds 
and  shepherds,  sons  of  Sharyata,  the  son  of  Manu,  that  is, 
the  god  Shar.     Chyavana   sowed  discord   among  them   in 
revenge  for  their  insults,  and  Sharyata,  in  trying  to  find 
out   the  cause   of  strife,  discovered   that   the   moss-grown 
mother-mountain  of  former  generations  was  really  the  fire- 
god.     He  then,  to  appease  his  wrath,  offered  to  him  his 
daughter  Su-kanya,  the  daughter  of  Shu,  the  germ  of  life, 
the  Shu-stone  hidden  in  the  mountain,  as  his  wife.     It  was 
this  union  which  was  completed  by  the  Ashvins,  who,  as  the 
physicians  of  the  gods,  promised  to  make  Chyavana  young 
again,  if  Su-kanya  got  leave  for  them  to  drink  Soma  with 
the  gods.     This  leave  was  granted  on  the  creation  of  Madhu, 
the  mead,  or  honey-drink  of  the  gods,  and  it  was  when  they 
were  received  into  heaven  that  the  Ashvins  made  the  re- 
juvenated Chyavana,  father  of  the  children  of  Su-kanya,  the 
mother  of  the  Shus,  or  sons  of  Dan,  called  in  the  Bible 

' Sachau's  Albenini's  fttdia,  pp.  241,  242.         -'Rigveda i.  116, 10 ;  117, 15. 


260  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


Hushim  and  Shuham,^  and  in  the  Rigveda  Shu-varna,  or  the 
race  of  the  Shus.  This  story  tells  us  how  the  inspired 
prophets,  or  medicine-men  of  the  race,  who  made  the  stars 
Gemini  their  guiding  stars,  moved  the  mother-mountain  from 
earth  to  heaven,  and  made  it  the  heavenly  fire-drill  I  have 
just  described.  In  this  story,  also,  Su-kanya,  the  mother  of 
the  heaven-bom  race,  is  the  daughter  of  the  Armenian  cloud- 
god,  Shar,  and  her  marriage  with  the  mountain-god  is  another 
form  of  the  union  of  the  Hebrew  father  Ab-ram,  the  father 
of  the  heights,  the  mountain  of  the  East,  with  Sar-ai,  and 
the  birth  in  their  old  age  of  Isaac,  the  blind  house-pole,  the 
Hindu  blind  king  Dhritarashtra,  from  whom  Esau,  the 
goat-god,  and  his  twin  brother  Jacob,  the  father,  through  the 
mess  of  red  pottage,  of  the  red  race,  the  sons  of  Yah,  were 
bom.  It  was  the  Ashvins  who,  as  physicians  to  the  gods^ 
healed  not  only  bodily  ailments,  but  also  ignorance  and 
mental  blindness;  who  gave  eyes,  the  dog-star,  Sirius,  of 
the  East,  and  the  bird-star,  Aquila,  of  the  West,  to  Rijrashva, 
the  blind  god  of  the  house-pole,  and  the  husband  of  the 
wolf-goddess ;  ^  who  gave  to  Vadhri-matI,  she  who  has  a 
sexless  (vadhri)  husband,  a  son,  Shyana,  the  god  of  the 
dark  night,  called  Hiranyahasta,  the  god  with  the  golden 
hand,  who  was  divided  into  three  parts,^  the  year  of  three 
seasons,  and  brought  back  to  life  as  the  New  Year  by  the 
Ashvins,  who  reckoned  the  movements  of  the  stars  the  golden 
fingers  of  heaven  born  of  the  sexless  father,  the  heavenly 
fire-drill.  They  gave  to  Shyana,  called  the  Kanva,  the  priests 
and  bards  of  the  Yadu-Turvashu,  the  liushati,  the  dawns  or 
dawning-light  from  the  East,*  and  to  the  Vish-vaka,  the 
speakers  (vaka)  of  the  tongue  of  the  village  (vhh\  the  black 
race  {1crishna\  the  god  Vishnu  (Vishnapu\  the  boar-god 
who  had  become  the  bull-god.^  They  gave  back  eyes,  the 
stars,  to  the  Kanva,  their  priests,^  and  raised  Bhuju,  mean- 


*  Gen.  xlvL  23 ;  Numbers  xxvi.  42. 
3  /did.  i.  117,  24;  X.  65,  12. 

*  /did,  i.  117,  7. 


-  Rigveda,  i.  116,  16 ;  117,  17,  18. 

*  /did.  i.  117,8. 

*  /did.  i,  118,  7. 


ESSAY  III  261 

ing  the  devourer,  the  god  of  the  devouring  fire,  the  son  of 

Tugra,  or  the  Tri-garta,  from  the  waters,  the  ocean-mother 

surrounding  the  earth  and  bore  him  through  the  air,  where 

he  mounts  a  ship  with  a  hundred  wheels,^  the  constellation 

Sata-vaesa.     It  was,  in  short,  these  twin  races  who  changed 

religion  from  the  worship  of  the  father-gods  of  earth,  to 

whom  sacrifices  were  offered  in  the  sacrificial  pits  {garta\  to 

the  worship  of  the  heavenly  father,  the  spirit  of  life  dwelling 

in  the  sexless  pole,  the  heavenly  fire-drill.     This  theology  is 

again  repeated  in  the  genealogy  of  the  sons  of  Kashyapa  in 

the  Mahabharata.     They  are  descended  from  Brahma,  the 

creator,  who  had  six  sons,  Marlchi,  Angiras,  Atri,  Kratu, 

Pulaha,  and  Pulastya.     These  are  in  Hindu  astronomy  the 

names  of  six  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  the  seventh  being 

Vashistha,  the  most-creating  fire,  that  is,  Brahma  himself, 

brought  by  Agastya,  the  star  Canopus,  from  the  lightning.* 

The  eldest  son,  Marichi,  the  tree-god  (Gond  marom,  a  tree), 

^'hich  becomes  in  Sanskrit  an  atom  of  light,  is  the  father  of 

Kashyapa,  the  father  of  the  tortoise  race.     He,  in  the  Rama- 

yan€^  entices  away  Rama,  the  black  bull  of  darkness,  from  Sita, 

"the  earth-furrow,  and  lures  him  into  the  forest  in  the  form 

of  a  deer.     When  killed  by  Rama,  he  is  raised  to  heaven  as 

"the  star  Mriga-sirsha,  the  head  of  the  deer  (mriffa).^     This 

star  rules  the  last  month  of  the  Hindu  year,  ending  with  the 

\vinter  solstice,  which   is  claimed   by  Krishna  (Vishnu)  in 

the  Mahabharata  as  his  special  month,  for  he  says,  '  I  am 

Mriga-sirsha."*  *    This  is  the  star  called  Marichi  in  the  Great 

Bear,  and  the  reason  of  his  being  called  the  head  of  the  deer 

is  to  be  found  in  the  Hindu  name  of  the  constellation,  which 

is  that  of  the  seven  Rishis,  or  antelopes  (Rishya).     The 

*  Rigveda,  i.  Ii6,  3-5. 

2  Sachau's  Alberunrs/«^ia,  vol.  i.  chap.  xlv.  p.  390;  Rigveda,  vii.  33,  10,  ii» 

'  Ramayana  iii.   40    ff;    Mahabharata   Vana   {^Drupadi  harana)   Parva, 

cclxxvi.-ccxci.  pp.  811-863.     But  see  Essay  iv.,  where  I  show  that  it  was 

Mriga-siras  (Orion),  the  hunter,  who  ruled  the  year,  hunted  the  moon  through 

her  phases,  and  turned  round  the  pole  and  the  Great  Bear,  led  by  Marichi. 

*  Mahabharata  Bhishma  {BhagavcU-gitd)  Parva,  xxxiv.  p.  115. 


262  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

chronological  order  of  the  change  is  shown  in  the  plot  of"' 
the  Ramayana,  for  it  is  when  the  deer-god,  the  antelope, 
Terah,  the  Akkadian  Dara,  is  raised  to  heaven  as  a  star  that 
Sita  is  carried  off  by  Ravana,  the  storm-god,  who  then  cuts 
off  the  wings  of  Jatajru,^  the  vulture,  the  bird  who  told  the 
passage  of  time  by  the  coming  of  the  storms  ushering  in  the 
rains,andSita  then  becomes,from  the  earth-furrow, thecrescent 
moon,  and  remains  a  virgin  captive  till  she  is  recovered  by 
Rama,  the  Nagur,  or  plough,  the  bull  of  light,  the  full 
moon ;  and*  it  is  the  union  of  the  crescent  and  full  moon 
which  brings  children  to  the  wedded  pair.  The  sexless 
nature  of  the  father-god  of  the  early  star-worshippers  comes 
out  still  more  clearly  in  the  story  of  Pandu,  the  reputed 
father  of  the  Pandavas,  and  brother  of  Dhritarashtra,  the 
father  of  the  Kauravyas,  or  the  tortoise  race.  Pandu  is 
made  impotent  because  he  killed  a  deer  in  the  forest,  the 
Marlchi  of  the  Ramayana,  who  was  really  a  Brahmin.  He, 
like  other  mythical  fathers,  had  two  wives.  Prithu,  the 
mother  of  the  Parthian  race,  the  daugliter  of  the  king  of 
the  Kunti-bhojas  or  Bhojas,  who  worship  the  spear  {Kunt\\ 
the  Pharsi  Pen  of  the  Gonds,  and  Madri,  the  daughter  of 
king  Shaleya,  the  Sal-tree,  the  king  of  the  race  who  believed 
intoxication  by  spirits  (vicul)  to  be  inspiration.  The  fathers 
of  their  children  were  gods.  Prithu's  children,  Yudishthira, 
Bhima,  and  Arjuna,  being  the  sons  of  Dharma,  the  god  of 
law,  Vayu,  the  wind-god,  and  Indra,  tlie  rain-god,  and 
MadrFs  Saha-deva,  the  driving-god,^  or  the  fire-god,  and 
Nakula,  the  mun-goose  eater  of  snakes,  being  the  tAvin  sons 
of  the  Ashvins.  The  chronological  order  in  these  stories  of 
the  sexless  father  is  the  same  as  that  in  Genesis,  where  the 
antelope  Terah  becomes  the  father  of  the  sexless  or  old  Abram. 
That  this  theology  was  worked  out  in  the  West  of  Asia, 
where  the  Phrygian  unsexed  priests  represented  the  sexless 

1  Meaning  born  (jot)  of  Ayu,  son  of  Uruash. 

^  Curtius,  Griechisdu  Etymologie^  p.  6i8,  compares  saha  with  Gr.  ^70^, 
and  again,  in  No.  117,  derives  this  from  d^w,  to  drive. 


ESSAY  III  ^63 

fire-god,  is  shown  by  the  Greek  names  for  the  twins  Kastor 
and  Polydeukes.  The  name  Kastor  means  the  pole  of  Ka, 
that  is,  of  the  delocalised  god  Varuna ;  but  the  name  is  one 
which  is  also  given  to  the  beaver,  which  is  always  called  by 
ancient  writers  the  castrated  animal.     Thus  Juvenal  says : — 

'  Imitatus  castora^  qui  se 
Eunuchum  ipse  facit^  cupiens  evadere  damno 
Testiculoruni  adeo  medicatum  intellegit  unguen.'^ 

But  the  beaver,  again,  is  the  building  animal  of  the  North, 
and  his  popular  connection  with  the  absence  of  sex  arises  from 
the  father  of  the  sexless  house-pole  succeeding  the  phallic 
father  of  the  Viru  worshippers.     It  was  these  sons  of  the 
North  who  made  the  beaver  the  symbol  of  the  father,  who 
also  made  the  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  their  mother-stars ; 
for  the  northern  Finns  are  the  sons  of  the  primaeval  bear, 
who  was,  like  Dumuzi,  the  son  of  Istar,  bom  beneath  their 
mother-tree,  which   was   the   sacred   pine-tree.     TTiis   tree- 
mother,  again,  sprang  from  a  hair  of  the  wolf,  the  wolf- 
Hiother  Leto,  the  mother  of  the  storm-god,  the  Branchian 
-Apollo,  whose   second   twin-child  was  Artemis,  who,  as  I 
sliow   in  Essay  vi.,  was  the  Great   Bear.      This  hair   was 
^(^lanted  by  Kati  in  Ukko's,  the  Hindu  Ush-ana,  the  thunder- 
^od'*s  black  mud,  and  it  was  in  Metsola  that  the  pine  formed 
^Dn    earth    by  Maa-tar,  the  daughter   of  earth  (maa\  the 
Xnother-tree   of  the   lioney-eating   bear,  the  father  of  the 
Vioney-drinking  Ashvins,  grew  up ;  and  it  was  as  the  special 
tree  of  the  honey-eating  bear  that  the  Indian  sons  of  the 
Ashvins  adored  the  Mahua-tree  {Bassia  latifoUa) ;  for  it  is 
to  these  trees  that  every  bear  in  the  neighbourhood  comes 
during   the   flowering  season   to   feast   on   its   honey-sweet 
flowers.*     It  was  this  Northern  pine-tree  which  was  borne 

^  Juvenal,  xii.  35  ;  De  Guberttatis  Die  ThierCy  German  Translation, 
chap.  viii.  p.  401. 

*  Abercromby,  *  Magic  Songs  of  the  Finns :  The  Origin  of  the  Bear,'§  a,  ^; 
*  The  Origin  of  Trees,'  f^^ — Folk  Lore,  March  and  September,  1890,  pp.  24-26, 
344-346. 


264  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

in  the  processions  of  the  mother-goddess  Cybele,  in  Phrygia, 
called  there,  as  by  the  Northern  Finns,  the  mother,  Ma,  and 
it  is  this  Northern  pine-tree  which  is  still  the  Christmas-tree 
of  Grermany,  the  mother-tree  of  the  Northern  smi-god,  bom 
at  the  winter  solstice,  and  wakened  from  the  sleep  of  winter 
to  the  life  of  spring  by  the  seven  bears,  the  measurers  of 
time  reckoned  by  weeks.  The  wide-spread  idea  of  the  sex- 
less star-father,  which  had  its  roots  in  Phrygia  and  the 
Northern  Finland,  also  appears  in  Egyptian  mythology, 
where  the  constellation  of  the  Great  Bear  is  called  the 
fore-thigh  of  Set,^  that  is,  the  part  of  the  sacrifice  especi- 
ally reserved  for  the  priests.^  Set  is  the  god  called 
Apa-pi,  or  the  water-snake,  by  the  Hyksos,  that  is,  the 
Great  Naga  himself;  and  he,  like  the  father-god  Marlchi, 
is  one  of  the  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  called  Mascheti,  or 
Cheops.^  Thus  we  see  that  this  constellation  passed  through 
successive  stages  according  with  the  advance  of  the  myth, 
which  made  it  the  collection  of  parent-stars.  First  its 
stars  were  the  seven  bears,  then  the  seven  antelopes,  then 
the  seven  bulls,  and  it  was  as  the  home  of  the  divine  essence 
which  had  given  life  to  the  ruling  bull-race  that  it  became 
the  Great  Naga.  Its  Hebrew  name  is  Ash,  s|>elt  with  an 
«m,  and  it  is  derived  from  the  root  nahash^  which  appears 
in  the  Arabic  name  of  the  constellation  Nabash,  and  the 
ain  in  Na  ""ash,  like  the  same  letter  in  Shinar,  repre- 
sents an  original  g^  so  that  it  was  once  called  Nagash,  or 
the  Great  Nag,  the  Nahusha.*  He  was  the  great  invisible 
god,  hidden  in  his  ark  of  clouds,  who  reveals  himself  to  men 
as  the  ruler  of  time  and  the  orderer  of  the  regular  sequence 
of  the  phenomena  of  nature,  and  who  chums  in  the  mortar  of 
the  heavens  the  life-giving  rains  into  which  his  divine  spirit 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  My  t ho  logic  der  Alien  Aigypter^  p.  203. 
'-*  Lev.  vii.  32-34 ;  i  Sam.  ix.  24,  when  the  thigh  is  given  to  Saul  who  was, 
as  Dr.  Sayce  has  shown,  the  sun-god  Sawul,  worshipped  by  the  Babylonians. 
3  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  dcr  Alien  /Egypier^  p.  702. 
^  Gesenius,  Thesaurus,  pp.  894-895. 


ESSAY  III  5^65 

is  infused,  just  as  Soma  was  churned  on  earth  by  the  Soma 
makers  and  fire  by  the  fire-priests.     This  rain,  the  first  of 
the  messengers  of  the  Almighty,  was  the  annual  flood  sent 
at  the  beginning  of  the  rainy  season,  and  called  by  the 
Akkadians  Nin-igi-a-zag,  the  first-born  {zag)  of  the  lord  or 
lady  (win)  of  the  spirits  {iffi)  of  the  water  (a),  the  eldest 
of  the  six  sons  of  la,^  who  sent  forth  the  reproduction  of 
Wmself,  the  son  of  life,  Shama  Napistim,  on  the  waters  of 
the  flood  in  the  mother-ship  as  the  New  Year.     Tlie  other 
five  sons  of  la  are  the  remaining  gods  of  the  five  seasons, 
^nd  the   moon-god.     But   the   children  of  the   life-giving 
'^ins  could  only  be  bom  after  a  period  of  gestation,  marked, 
*^  I  have  shown,  by  the  ten  stars  completing  the  figure  of 
**ie  heavenly  Father,  and  this  period  of  ten  lunar  months  is 
^produced  in  the  ten  antediluvian  kings  of  Babylon,  begin- 
ning with  the  ram-god  Alorus,  or  Ailuv,  the  Semitic  trans- 
action of  tlie  Akkadian  Lu-nit,  a  male  sheep,  followed  by 
^^aporus,  'the  bull  of  the  fomidation,"  from  a/a/?,  a  bull, 
^nd    Mr,    foundation.^      These    ten    kings  again   appear   in 
^ienesis   as   the  ten   patriarchs,  ending  with    Noah,  whose 
^anie  means  Rest,  the  Xisuthros  of  the  Babylonian  list,  and 
^*lio  was  the  son  of  Lamech,  tlic  god  of  the  Linga,  who  had 
become  in  this  cosmogony  the  father  of  men.^     It  is  these 
ten  fathers  who  gave  their  collective  name  of  Dasaratha,  the 
ten  chariots,  to  the  father  of  Hiima,  the  bull-god  of  dark- 
ness.    But  this  primaeval  ten,  the  sacred  number  of  the  ram 
a.nd  bull-race,  becomes  in  the  age  of  the  Ashvins  eleven,  the 
eleventh  father  being  the  guiding-star,  who  is  tlie  appointed 
messenger  of  the  father-god,  the  moon-god.     It  is  to  them 
that  eleven    victims   were    offered  at  the    Soma  sacrifice — 
eleven  kindling  verses  called  Samidhcnl,  sung  at  the  lighting 
of  the  fire  on    the   fire  altar,  eleven   stanzas  sung  in  the 
Apri  hymns,  recited  at  the  animal  sacrifices,  and  it  is  this 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  233. 

-  R.  Brown,  junr.,   F.S.A.,   The  Phainomena^  or  Heavenly  Display^  of 
Aratus,  App.  ii.  pp.  79,  80.     See  Essay  I  v.  ^  Gen.  v. 


266  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

calculation  which  makes  the  Rudras,  or  father-gods,  in  the 
mythology  of  the  Mahabharata,  eleven,  one  of  them  being 
Sthanu,  meaning  a  place  or  station,  who  is  their  father.^  It 
is  on  this  number  eleven  that  the  division  of  the  gods 
into  thirty-three,  or  three  times  eleven,  is  based  in  the 
Rigveda.2  These  thirty-three  gods  of  time  mean  the  five 
seasons  of  the  Hindu  year,  and  the  twenty-eight  days  of  the 
lunar  month,  and  they  thus  comprise  the  course  of  the  year 
divided  among  the  six  sons  of  la,  the  five  seasons,  and  the 
moon-god  ;  and  it  is  these  six  as  gods  of  heaven  united  with 
the  five  seasons  of  earth  which  make  up  the  sacred  eleven, 
and  it  is  these  eleven  gods  multiplied  by  three,  the  original 
mother  seasons  of  the  race,  which  makes  thirty-three.  In 
the  Aitareya  Brahmana,  the  gods  who  do  not  drink  Soma, 
and  to  whom  animal  victims  are  offered,  are  thirty-three. 
Eleven  Pray aj as  or  primaeval  (pra)  gods,  who  are  invited  to 
the  sacrifice  by  the  Apri  hymns  ;  eleven  Anu-yajas  or  gods  of 
earth,  to  whom  the  victims  are  offered,  and  eleven  Apa-yajas 
or  water-gods  (ap\  to  wliom  the  supplementary  offerings  are 
made.^  It  is  these  same  thirty-tliree  gods,  headed  by  Sakko 
or  Sukra,  who  are  the  gods  of  the  Tavatimsa  heaven,  or 
heaven  of  the  thirtv-three  of  tlie  Buddhists,"*  and  '  the 
thirty-three  Lords  of  the  ritual  order"*  fixed  by  Ahura 
Mazda,  of  the  Zendavesta.-'*  The  eleven  gods  are  called  in 
the  Akkadian  account  of  the  comlmt  between  Merodacli  and 
Tiamut,  the  mother  (mut)  of  living  things  (//V/),  her  eleven- 
fold off>»pring.^  But  these  eleven  gods,  like  all  the  gods  of 
the  Aslivin  age,  lx*came  star-gods,  and  they  are  the  eleven 
stars  of  Joseph''s  dream."  We  can  identify  these  eleven  stars 
as  known  to  the  Egyptians  from  N'ignette  ix.  of  the  Papyrus 

1  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sarnbhava)  Parva,  Ixvi.  p.  i88. 

2  Rigveda,  i.  34,  11,  139,  ii,  viii.  35,  3,  ix.  92,  4. 
'  liaug,  AH.  BrAh,  vol.  ii.  p.  1 10. 

*  Childers,  Pali  Diet,  s.v.  *Tavalimsa,*  meaning  *  thirty-lhree.* 

*  Mill,  Yapia^  i.  10  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  p.  198. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  vi.  p.  382,  in  hymn  telling  of  the 
fight  between  Bel  and  Tiamut.  "  Gen.  xxxvii.  9,  10. 


ESSAY  III  267 

of  Ani,  where  they  appear  as  the  four  sons  of  Horus,  the 
four  stars  of  the  constellation  of  the  Servant,  that  is, 
Pegasus,  which  watch  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  ;^  and 
this  shows  different  stellar  arrangements  from  that  marked 
in  the  first  conception  of  the  pole,  which  I  have  already 
described,  and  denotes  the  next  age,  when  the  sons  of  the 
horse  succeeded  those  of  the  bull  and  ass.  In  this  list  of 
stars,  the  first  star  of  the  great  bear  is  called  Teh-teh,  the 
Akkadian  god  Te-te  of  the  two  foundations,  who  gave  his 
name  to  the  first  sign  of  the  Akkadian  zodiac.  But  in 
V^ignette  viii.  of  the  Papyrus  of  Ani  we  have  a  different 
series  of  names  for  Horus  and  his  four  sons,  who  here  appear 
as  the  five  seasons.  (1)  Horus,  or  the  summer;  (2)  Hapi,  the 
Nile  god,  the  god  of  the  rainy  season,  depicted  as  an  ape ;  (3) 
Smpta,  autumn  ;  (4)  Tuamutf,  the  winter,  he  who  worships  his 
mother.  The  characters  denoting  the  name,  the  Egyptian 
five-rayed  star,  the  vulture  and  the  snake,  show  that  he 
is  the  ruling  god  of  the  year  of  five  seasons,  ushered  in  by 
the  storm- bird,  the  vulture,  and  guarded  by  the  snake  of 
the  Kushite  or  Naga  race.  He  is  depicted  as  a  jackal- 
headed-god,  while  the  spring,  Khebsenuf,  he  who  refreshes 
his  brethren,  is  hawk-headed,  and  denotes  the  growing  sun- 
god.  That  the  origin  of  the  conceptions  shown  in  this 
and  other  pictures  of  the  vignette,  reproducing  Indian 
mythology,  is  to  be  sought  in  India,  cannot  be  doubted  when 
we  find  in  Vignette  xxxi.,  the  thirty-three  Indian  gods  of 
time  sitting  in  judgment  on  the  soul  of  Ani  in  the  grand 
hall  of  the  Maat,  the  goddess  of  law,  the  regular  order  of 
nature  maintained  by  the  stars  and  the  sun.'-  But  to  judge 
from  the  names  of  the  Hindu  months,  which  undoubtedly 
go  back  to  the  days  of  stellar  chronology,  the  eleven  father- 
stars  of  time  worshipped  by  the  Ashvins  seem  to  be  quite 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  AUen  jEgypter^  pp.  704-712. 

^  I  am  indebted  for  the  translation  of  these  names  to  Dr.  Renouf,  who 
most  kindly  helped  me  when  I  was  studying  the  Papyrus  in  the  British 
Museum.     It  gives  a  historical  epitome  of  Egyptian  theology. 


268  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHIS1X)RIC  TIMES 

different  from  those  of  the  Egyptian  or  Zend  ruling  stars. 
We  certainly  seem  to  have  got  the  star  Sirius  in  the  Hindu 
month  Assar,  the  Sanskrit  Ashadha,  which  reproduces  the 
Assyrian  fish -god  As-s6r,  and  which  once,  as  I  have  shown, 
began  the  Hindu  year  with  the  rising  of  Sirius  at  tlie  summer 
solstice,  which  now  falls  in  the  beginning  of  Assar ;  we  also 
have  the  month  Asvayujau,  or  the  month  of  the  twins,  the 
Ashvins,  the  month  coming  next  after  Bhadrapada,  the 
month  in  which  the  autumnal  equinox  takes  place.  This  pro- 
bably, in  the  days  when  time  was  reckoned  by  lunar  periods, 
represented  two  lunar  months ;  next  comes  Karttaka,  or  the 
month  of  the  Krittakas  or  Pleiades,  followed  by  Margas- 
sirsha,  the  month  of  Orion,  Pushya,  the  month  of  the  constel- 
lation Taurus,  and  Magha  that  of  Argo ;  while  Bhadrapada, 
the  month  of  the  autumnal  equinox  is  most  certainly  that 
of  the  goat-fish  Capricomus,  which  is  the  zodiacal  sign  of  the 
month.  It  is  marked  in  the  Nakshatra  division  of  the 
heavens  by  the  Nakshatras  Purva  Bhadra-pada  and  Uttara 
Bhadra-pada,  showing  that  there  were  two  arrangements  of 
the  ancient  Hindu  year,  one  made  by  the  Eastern  races 
Purva,  and  the  other  by  the  Northern  Uttara,  such  as  I 
liave  already  shown  to  exist  in  the  three  seasons  of  the 
Nortliem  immigrants  and  the  five  seasons  of  the  Naga  or 
Eastern  races.  The  dominants  of  these  Nakshatras  are  the 
Aja  ekapad,  the  one-footed  goat,  and  the  Ahir  Budhnya,  the 
snake,  spoken  of  in  the  Rigveda  ^  as  that  which  lies  in  the 
uttennost  depths,  that  is,  the  Shesh  Nag  lying  under  and 
supporting  the  earth.  It  is  these  two  which  form  the  month 
of  the  blessed  (bhadra)  foot  (j)ada\  and  it  is  the  sign 
Capricornus,  sacred  to  this  month,  which  is  called  by  the 
Hindu  astronomers  Makaram  ^  or  the  Alligator,  the  star 
Makkar  of  the  Babylonians.^     This  was  the  month  which 

*  Rigveda,  ii.  31,  6,  vii.  35,  13. 

-  Sachau's  Alberunl's  /fufia,  chaps,  xviii.  xix.  and  Ixi.  ;  vol.  i.  p.  204, 
2i9f  220;  vol.  ii.  p.  122. 

^  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  'Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars.'  Proceedings  of 
Society  of  Biblical  Archaology,     Star  xxx.     Jany.  1890. 


ESSAY  III  269 

afterwards  became  sacred  to  the  ox,  and  was,  therefore,  called 
Prosthapadah,  or  the  ox-footed  month,  the  Boe-dromion  or 
month  of  the  course  (dromos)  of  the  ox  of  the  Athenians,  and 
it  was  then  that  the  constellation  of  the  Alligator  became  that 
encircling  the  pole.  It  is  these  two  constellations,  that  of  the 
goat-fish,  Shimshumara,  and  that  of  the  bull  {vrisahha\  which 
are  said  in  the  Rigveda  to  draw  the  chariot  of  the  Ashvins, 
which  brings  them  to  the  house  of  Divodasa,  he  of  the  bright 
(div)  race  or  land  of  the  sun.^  Divodasa  is  the  son  of  Vadhri- 
ashva,  the  sexless  (vadhri)  horse,  the  horse  of  the  Ashvins 
who  is  the  foe  of  the  Brisaya  or  witches,^  who  is  also  called 
Bhfiu*advaja,  or  the  lark,  the  priest  of  the  Bharatas.^  In 
another  hymn  the  Ashvins  are  said  to  drive  through  the 
sea  with  one  of  the  wheels  of  their  chariot  on  the  bull'^s 
head,  and  the  other  in  heaven ;  that  is,  to  drive  round  the 
pole,*  and  the  seasons  thus  appropriated  to  the  Ashvins  are 
those  beginning  with  the  autumnal  equinox,  sacred  to  the 
goat-fish  and  the  vernal  equinox  sacred  to  the  lark,  the  bird 
of  spring.  It  was  these  sons  of  the  ass  who  divided  the 
year  into  four  parts  by  reckoning  the  equinoxes  and 
solstices.  These  together  made  up  the  four  seasons  of 
spring,  summer,  autumn,  and  winter  made  by  the  Ribhus 
or  sons  of  the  alligator  ;^  and  it  was  by  dividing  the  autumn, 
and  making  it  the  twin  seasons  of  the  rain  and  barley  sow- 
ings, that  they  formed  their  year  of  five  seasons.  This  year 
b^an,  like  the  Zend  year,  with  the  rising  of  Tishtrya  at  the 
summer  solstice,  the  Hindu  As-sar  or  the  fish-god,  when  the 
first  rains  fall  in  North-eastern  India.  This  year  of  the 
(1)  rainy  season,  (2)  autumn,  (3)  winter,  (4)  spring,  and  (5) 

*  Rigveda,  i.  Ii6,  i8. 

'  /did,  vi.  6i,  I,  3.  For  dasa  dasya,  as  connected  with  daqyu^  the  land 
or  province,  see  Zimmer,  Altindisches  Leben,  chap.  iv.  pp.  no,  112. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  116,  18,  vi.  16,  5.  The  Bharadvaj as  claim  to  be  descended 
from  the  lark.  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  p.  161.  De 
Gubematis  Die  Thiere,  Gennan  Translation,  Part  ii.  chap.  viii.  p.  549. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  30,  18,  19. 

»  Ibid,  iv.  33,  5,  i.  161,  4, 


270  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

summer,  is  in  the  Brahmanas  said  to  be  the  year  of  Prajapati, 
called  Ka.^  It  is  to  this  year  that  libations  are  poured  out 
at  the  third  and  last  of  the  morning  pressings  of  the  Soma 
festival.^  The  service  opens  with  the  summons  to  Indra,  the 
rain-god,  accompanied  by  the  cry  Brihat,  Brihat;  thereby  call- 
ing on  him  to  create  (bri).  The  first  cup  drawn  is  to  Shukra, 
the  god  of  the  rainy  season,  the  star  Sirius ;  the  second  to 
Manthin,  whom,  we  have  seen,  is  the  god  of  the  barley  or 
autumn  season  ;  the  third  to  Agrayana,  meaning  the  ban- 
ning, the  winter,  the  first  season  reckoned  in  the  measure- 
ment of  time  by  the  lunar  year ;  the  fourth  to  the  M aruts,  the 
mother-goddesses,  to  whom  the  Dcidhigharma  I  have  already 
spoken  of  is  offered  at  the  Udumbara  house-pole,  tlie  god- 
desses of  spring,  to  whose  honour  the  Saturnalia  of  Magh 
are  held ;  the  fifth  to  the  Uk-thya,  called  in  the  Brahmanas, 
the  season  of  the  Dhruva  or  pole,^  the  time  of  the  summer 
heats,  when  nature  dies  temporarily,  or  rather  sleeps,  and 
thereby  invigorates  itself  for  the  work  of  re-creation  which 
is  to  l)egin  with  the  rains.  This  year  is  that  sacred  to  the 
Naga  gods,  for  the  hymns  chanted  in  its  honour  are  those 
ascribed  to  the  snake  Arbuda,  the  snake  of  the  four  (arba) 
ruling  stars  of  the  heavens,  and  to  the  snake  Jarat-karna, 
he  who  makes  old,  the  god  of  the  meridian  pole,  who  is  said 
in  the  Mahabliarata  to  be  the  father  and  mother  of 
Astika,  the  sacred  eight  (sbirs)*  wliich,  as  I  have  shorni, 
wei-e  the  creating  fire-drill  in  the  Kushite  cosmogony.  This 
year  of  Praja-pati  is  similar  to  the  Zend  year  of  five  seasons 
ruled  by  the  four  Zend  goddesses  and  the  sexless  father-god, 
to  whom  the  ancestral  fathers  of  the  race  are  said  in  the 
Zendavesta  to  have  offered  animal  sacrifices.     This  year  did 

*  Eggeling,  Sai.  Brdh,,  iv.  5,  5,  12 ;  5,  6,  4 ;  S.B.E.,  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  408, 
410. 

•J  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh.,  p.  116  ;  iv.  2,  3,  i.  2 ;  S.B.E.,  pp.  331,  332. 
'  Eggeling,   Sat,     Brdh,,    iv.    2,    3,    3 ;    2,   4,    I  ;  S.B.E.,    vol.    xxvi. 
pp.  293,  298. 

*  Mahabharala  Adi  (^j/^ta)  Parva,  xlv.-xlviii.  pp.   132-140.     A sti  mt^ns 
Mhe  eight.* 


ESSAY  III  271 

not,  like  the  official  Zend  year,  begin  with  the  rising  of  the 
father-star  Shukra,  but  with  the  goddess-mother  of  the  rainy 
season,  Ardvi  Sura  Anahita,  the  undefiled  heavenly  spring 
descending  from  the  Mount  Hukairya,  the  home  of  the  active 
(Jcairya)  begetter  Qiu)^  the  mount  of  the  Hu  or  Shu-stone, 
the  heavenly  Istar.  After  her  comes  Gos,  the  cow-mother, 
to  whom  the  Gond  autumn  festival,  called  the  Pola,  is  dedi- 
cated, and  who  is  the  mother  Ida  of  the  race  of  barley 
growers,  the  Rama  Hvastra,  the  wind-god,  the  invisible 
father,  the  wintry  season,  the  Ashi  Vanguhi,  the  goddess  of 
marriage  and  the  spring  time;  and  lastly,  Zam-yad,  the 
mountain,  the  summer  season.^  The  Egyptian  five,  Osiris, 
Isis,  Horns,  Set,  Nebt-hat,  mark  the  opposition  between  the 
Northern  sun  of  summer  and  the  Southern  sun  of  winter, 
which  is  so  prominently  noticed  in  Egyptian  ritualistic  astro- 
nomy, Osiris  and  Isis  ruling  the  North,  and  Set  and  Nebt- 
hat  the  South ;  while  Horus,  called  Hor-khuti,  the  creator  of 
the  supreme  heavens,  Khut,  the  pole-god,  rules  the  East,^ 
whence  Sirius,  Isis  Satit  rises  to  usher  in  the  Egyptian 
year,*  beginning  with  the  summer  solstice.  In  the  Jewish 
five  the  myth  is  almost  entirely  genealogical,  and  has  dis- 
carded the  references  to  its  seasonal  origin,  which  appear 
in  the  other  myths.  It  merely  sets  forth  Jacob,  the  son  of 
the  blind  father,  the  house-pole,  as  the  pole  of  the  heavens, 
standing  in  the  midst  of  his  four  Avives,  two  of  which,  the 
cow  and  ewe-mothers,  Leah  and  Rachel,  are  the  daughters 
of  Laban,  the  moon-god  of  Haran,^  while  the  other  two 
reproduce  the  wives  of  Lamech,  Billah,  the  old  being  Adah  or 

^  Darmesteter,  ZendavestaAb-anYast^  Introduction;  S.B.E.  vol.xxiii.  p.  52. 
^  It  is  to  these  gods  that  animal  sacrifices  are  said,  in  the  Yasts  addressed 
to  them,  to  have  been  offered  by  the  fathers  of  the  Zend  race. 

•  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  AHen  yEgypter,  p.  451. 
**  Ibid,  p.  203. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  249  note  3;  Gen.  xxix.  2,5. 
Lxthan  means  the  white  one,  who  is  called  in  Assyrian  inscriptions  the  moon- 
god  of  Harran,  and  in  the  text  quoted  by  Dr.  Sayce,  'the  brick  foundation 
of  heaven.' 


M 


272  THE  RUUXG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Ida,  and  Zilpah,  Zillah,  or  Tsillu,  and  the  only  historico- 
astronomical  feature  in  this  arrangement  is  that  Leah  and 
Rachel  are  the  wives  of  the  Northern  sun,  and  Billah  and 
Zilpah  the  unwedded  wives  of  the  matriarchal  South.     TK« 
Hindu  five  ancestors,  who  form  the  year  beginning  i%ith  tl>  ^ 
twin-gods  of  the  rainy  season  are  the  sons  of  Yayati,  Yad*-^ 
Tur\'asu,  the  twin  sons  of  DevayanI,  the  daughter  of  Shukr:^ 
the   rain-god;  and   Druhyu,   Anu,   and  Puru,  the  sons 
Sharmishtha,  the  banyan-tree.     But  the  Jewish  and  Hinc 
mvtholofi:v  carr\'  the   mvthic  histor>'  beyond   the   days 
Kushite  rule,  and  the  cult  of  the  year  of  five  seasons ; 
Jacob    has    thirteen    children,   including    Dinali,    his    on    - 
daughter,  the  thirteen  months  of  the  lunar  year,  calculated 
from  the  seven  children  of  Leah,  the  holy  week ;  and   it  i^ 
these  thirteen  months,  the  daughters  of  Daksha,  the  visible 
teaching-god,  the  moon-god,  who  was  first  the  fire-god,  who 
are  the  wives  of  Kashyapa,  the  father  of  the  tortoise  race.^ 
The  succession  of  the  Semite  lunar  race  to  that  which  looked 
up  to  eleven  father-gods  is  told  in  a  number  of  stories  I  wiU 
now  refer  to.     The  first  of  these  is  the  birth  of  the  egg- 
bom  children  of  Vinata,  meaning  she  who  is  bowed  down, 
the  tenth  of  the  wives  of  Kashyapa,  completing  the  ten  lunar 
months  of  gestation.     She  is  followed  in  the  list  of  months 
by  Kapila,  meaning  the  yellow,  the  father  of  the  yellow  race 
of  barley-growers.     Her  children  are  Aruiia,  the  fire-drill, 
who  is  said  to  be  only  half-developed,  the  god  of  the  rainy 
season,  the  time  of  pnxrreation,  and  Gad-ura,  the  bull  of 
light,  'the  winged -bull,  the  Soma  Pavamana  of  the  Rig\'eda, 
the  unclouded  moon-god  of  the  dry  months.     These  eleven 
parent  gods  and  their  lunar  successors  also  appear  in  the 
Mahabharata  in  Vahlika,  the  father  of  the  Takkas,  and  his 
ten  sons,  who  fight  on  the  side  of  the  Kauravyas.     The 
eldest  of  tlu»se  is  called  Somadatta,  given  by  Soma,  the  water 
of  life.     They,  as  I  have  already  shown,  marched  under  the 
banner    of   the    Yupa,   the   sacrificial    stake.      They  were 

*  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sambhava)  Parva,  Ixvi.  p.  189. 


ESSAY  III  273 

all  slain  by  Satyaki,  meaning  the  seventh,  the  grandson  of 
Shini,  the  moon-goddess  of  the  Semite  Shus,  of  the  race  of 
Satvata,  bom  from  the  sacred  seven.^     The  death  of  the 
eleven  champions  of  the   sacrificial  stake  foreshadows   the 
ultimate  fate  of  the  Kauravya  host,   divided   into   eleven 
Akshauhinis  or  divisions,  conquered  by  the  seven  divisions  of 
the  Piindavas.^     The  change  in  the  reckoning  of  time  intro- 
duced by  the  moon- worshippers  is  told  in  the  names  of  the 
Pindava  lieroes,  the  five   sons   of  the  year  of  the  moon- 
pxldess,  called  Pandhari  by  the  Gonds,  for  it  l)egan  with  the 
^nter  solstice  and  the  spring,  the  season  of  Yudishthira, 
fjom  mider  the  constellation  Miigha,  and  the  son  of  Dharma, 
the   law,  followed  by  the  hot  weather,  Bhima,  the  son  of 
^^3^u,  the  burning  west  wind,  the  rains  Arjuna,  the  son  of 
I'ldm,  and  the  twins  Sahadeva  and  Nakula,  the  sons  of  the 
-^shvins,  to  whom  the  autumn  and  winter  are  sacred.     This 
^*=^Tiie  story  of  the  triumph  of  the  moon-goddess  over  the 
^Ic^Yen  fathers  is  told  in  the  Book  of  Esther,  for  Esther  is 
^■^e  Hebrew  mother  moon-goddess  Ashtoreth,  who  becomes 
tt^^  wife  of  the  king  of  Shushan,  the  great   Susi-Nag,  in 
l^l«xre  of  Vashti,  goddess  of  the  Tur-vashu,  who  worshipped 
■^^^r  as  the  feminine  form  of  Vas,  the  father  god.     Esther, 
^^"Sth  the  help  of  Mordecai,  the  Babylonian  bull-god  Marduk, 
^-^led  Gudi-bir,  bull  of  light,  overcomes  and  hangs  Haman 
^Xid  his  ten  sons,  the  minister  of  Vashti,  and  brings  in  the 
emite    vear   of  thirteen   lunar   months.^      This   historical 
evolution  is  spoken  of  in  the   Zenda vesta  as  the  victory 
Husrava,  the  offspring  of  the  Hus,  over  the  Turanian 
rangrasyan  and  his  colleague  Kercsaviizda,  he  of  the  homed 
^keresa)   club  {vazda)^  the   Takka   trident,  who  had  slain 
Syavarshan,  son  of  Kavi  Usa,  and  ruled,  for  two  hundred 
^ears,  Turan    and  the    holy  home   of    the    Kushite   race, 

^  Mahabharata  Bhishma  {Bhiskmavada)  Parva,  Ixxiv.  Ixxv.  Ixxxii.  pp.  273, 
27S»  293. 

'^  Ihid.  Udyoga  Parva,  Ivi.  The  *  Akshauhinis '  denote  the  monthly  revolu- 
tions of  the  Kcavenly  axle,  the  starry  chariot  called  Akkha  or  Aksa,  the  axle. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  257  note  I. 

18 


274  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHIS1X)RIC  TIMES 

watered  by  the  Haetumaiit  or  Helmend.  These  Turaniansas 
had,  during  their  rule,  shown  their  skill  in  irrigation,  likc5= 
the  Hindu  Kurniis  and  the  Akkadian  sons  of  Akki  th^ 
irrigator,  for  they  had  covered  tlie  country  with  water — 
channels  and  hrought  a  thousand  springs  into  Lake  Kashava^ 
the  parent  lake  of  the  Kushite  racc.^  Tlieir  conqueror  i^ 
called  in  the  Rigveda  Su-shravas,  and  also  Tur-vayana  or  th 
inspirer  of  the  Tur,  and  he  is  said  to  have  vanquished  Kutsa^ 
the  Puiii,  the  priest  of  the  god  Ka,  Atithigva,  the  coming- 
(gva)  Atithi  {gu€st\  a  name  of  Divodasa,  the  fire-god,  and 
Ayu,  the  son  of  Puru-ravas,  the  thunder-god.^  It  is  the  wars 
between  the  Punis,  the  sons  of  Kutsa,  aided  by  the  god 
Piishan,  the  bull  and  alligator,  and  the  trading  Sus  called 
Panis,  the  traders  denounced  as  Asunvants,  the  people  who 
do  not  press  Soma,'  which  are  expressly  celebrated  in  the  sixth 
Mandala  of  the  Rigveda,  ascribed  to  the  authorship  of  the 
sons  of  Bharadvaja,  the  lark.  The  Panis  are  mentioned  in 
this  Mandala  twelve  times,  the  same  number  of  times  which 
they  are  spoken  of  in  the  hymns  of  the  second,  third,  fourth, 
fifth,  seventh,  and  eighth  Mandalas  taken  together.*  In  this 
Mandala  Pushan  plays  a  conspicuous  part,  being  called  the 
brother  and  twin  god  of  Indra,^  but  while  Pushan  eats  barley 
porridge  {lcaramba\  the  food  of  the  Ashvin  Tur-vasluis,  Indra 
drinks  Soma,  the  drink  of  the  sons  of  Yadu,  or  the  holy  Ya.® 
The  Bharadviijas,  the  sons  of  the  lark,  called  by  Aristophanes 
the  king  of  birds,  the  priests  of  Divodasa,the  heavenly  fire-god, 
and  their  conquerors  and  successors,  the  Gotamas,  or  sons  of 
the  cow,  the  trading  Panis,  are  the  reputed  authors  of  the  sixth 
and  seventh  Mandalas  of  the  Rig\'eda,  and  these  two  clans  are, 
as  Ludwig  has  j)roved,  the  two  that  form  the  race  of  Angiras, 

1  Darmestcter,  Zeftdavcsta  Aban  Yastj  41,  49;  Cos  Yast,  18;  Zamyad 
Vasty  74,  77;  West,  Bwtdahish^  xx,  33;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  64  note  I, 
65,  66,  302,  304 ;  vol.  V.  p,  82. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  53,  9,  10. 

^"Hillebrandt,  Vcdische  Mythologies  p.  88, 

^  Ibid,  pp.  83-94.  °  Rigveda,  vi.  55,  5.  *  itid.  vi.  57,  2. 


ESSAY  III  275 

^i"   priests  who  offered  bunit  offerings,  and  who  succeeded  the 
Bhxigus,  the  priests  of  the  earthly  fire-drill,  the  miracle- work- 
^^S   god  of  the  wizards.      It  was  also  Drona,  whose  name 
Jii^fiins  the  cask,  chum,  or  mortar  in  which  Soma  was  churned, 
tiif&  son  of  Bharadvaja  and  Kripa,  the  son  of  Gotama,  who  are 
1^    "the  Mahabharata  the  tutors  of  the  young  Kauravya  and 
P^xidava  princes.     It  was  Ashvattha,  the  son  of  Drona,  the 
Fi^cus  religiosa  or  Piped-tree,  which  supplanted  the  Bur-tree  as 
tli^  mother-tree  of  the  sons  of  the  fig-tree,  who  inaugurated 
tt^^  rule   of  the   conquering   Pandavas,   and    the   bull-god 
Vishnu,  by  killing  all   the  children  of  the  Pandavas  and 
I^XTipadi,  and  thus  leaving  the  succession  to  the  kingdom  to 
^^  son  of  Aijuna  and  Subhadra,  the  blessed  Su,  the  sister  of 
K^T*ishna   or  Vishnu,   whose  name   had   been  changed  from 
^«^dhuva,  or  the  drinker  of  Madhu,  to  Madhu-han,  or  its 
slayer  (fian).      These  offerers  of  burnt  offerings,  who  came 
""oin  Western  Asia,  are  the  race  who  first  offered  human 
*^-<^rifices,  for  the  Aral>s   only  burned   human  victims   and 
"^^"Voured  their  other  offerings  raw.^     Human  sacrifices  were 
'^^'lional  sacrifices  among  the  early  Semites,  offered,  not  like 
*^^imal   victims,   periodically,  but    in   times   of    pestilence, 
^^-^^iiine,  and  national  danger,  to  the  gods  of  earth.     It  was 
**^^n  that  the  vitality  of  the  earth  must  be  restored,  and  the 
*^^lp  of  the  earth  goddess  secured  by  the  blood  of  the  most 
^'^^luable  victim  the  nation  could  offer.     This  was  the  son  of 
*'*^^  national  chief  or  king,  and  when  his  blood  was  poured 
the  ground  and  the  flesh  consumed  with  fire,  the  aid  both 
the  earth-goddess  and  the  fire-god  was  secured  for  the 
^^fiicted  land.     Hence  Abram  was  ready  to  offer   his  son 
*-^^ac  to  God,2  and  Ahaz  and  Manasseh,  kings  of  Judah, 
^^d  Mesha,  king  of  Moab,  sacrificed  their  sons,^  and  M icah 
^^Us  us  that   the  eldest  son  was  usually  sacrificed.*     The 
P^"actice  was  not  confined  to  royal  personages,  for  we  are  told 

^  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  Lect.  vi.  p.  210. 
*  Gen.  xxii.  10.  '  2  Kings  xvi.  3,  xxi.  6 ;  iii.  27. 

"*  Micah  vi,  7. 


i 


276  THE  IIULLNG  RACES  OF  niEHISTOllIC  TIMES 

that  the  men  of  Sepharvaim  burnt  their  children  in  the 
fire  to  Adra-melek,  the  fire-god,  and  Ana-nielek,  the  god  of 
heaven.^  The  sacrifice  of  the  son  bv  fire  was  one  common 
both  to  the  Phoenicians,  Akkadians,  and  Egyptians,  for 
children  used  to  \ye  sacrificed  by  tlie  Carthaginians,^  and  an 
Akkadian  text  bids  the  Ab-gal  or  chief  priest  to  say  that 
'  the  father  must  give  the  life  of  his  child  for  the  sin  of  his 
soul,'  and  in  the  Observations  of  Bel  we  are  told  that  *  on 
high  places  the  son  is  burnt,'  while  human  sacrifices  are 
depicted  on  several  early  Btibylonian  cylinders.^  There  are 
also  indications  in  Akkadian  and  Egyptian  hymns  that  the 
flesh  of  human  victims  was,  like  that  of  the  totemistic 
animal  ancestors,  eaten  at  these  sacrifices,  for  a  hymn  to  the 
Akkadian  god  Tu-tu  speaks  of  him  as  feeding  on  mankind, 
n  and  a  bilingual  fi§;ii|at3&li  hymn  speaks  of  '  eating  the  fix)nt 

f^"^^  breast  of  a  man,'  *  but  at  these  feasts  the  victims  eaten  were 
not  the  children  of  the  sacrificer,  but,  like  those  slain  by  the 
^Vi'abs  and  Kandhs,  prisoners  taken  in  war  or  kidnapped  for 
the  purpose,  and  as  Kashyapa  is  called  in  Hindu  mythology 
the  father  of  men,  it  was  the  totemistic  ancestor  '  man '  who 
was  eaten  at  these  feasts,  just  as  the  Arabs  drank  the  blood  of 
their  human  victims,^  and  it  was  from  a  dim  remembrance  of 
this  practice  that  man  is  said  to  be  'the  sacrifice'  in  the 
Brahmanas,^  and  also  that  the  sacrificer  sacrifices  himselfj 
The  sacrifice  of  the  eldest  son  is  reproduced  in  the  Hindu 
story  telling  how  king  Soma-ka,  by  the  advice  of  his  priest, 
sacrificed  his  eldest  son  Jantu,  in  order  to  procure  otlier 
children,  and  it  was  when  he  was  slain  that  Soma-ka's 
hundred  wives  conceived  the  hundred  sons  born  of  Jantifs 

^  2  Kings  xvii.  31. 

-  Porph.,  Dc  Abstinentidf  ii.  56  and  57. 
'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  78  note  4. 
*  Ibid,  Lect.  i.  pp.  83  note  i,  84. 

®  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites^  Lect.  x.  pp.  343,  349. 
^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  i.   3,  2,  I  ;  iii.   5,  3,  i;    S.B.E.  vol.   xii.  p.  78, 
XX vi.  p.  126. 
^  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,  i.  2,  3,  5  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  49  note  3, 


ESSxVY  III  277 

blood.^  The  idea  that  the  sacrifice  of  the  first-born  led  to 
increase  of  offspring  gave  rise  to  the  Semite  custom  of  sacri- 
ficing firetlings  at  the  spring  festival  of  the  venial  equinox, 
a  sacrifice  enjoined  on  the  Israelites  in  Exodus,  where  it  is 
mentioned  in  connection  with  the  Paschal  lamb.^  Also  the 
sacrifice  of  the  Passover  was,  as  Wellhausen  shows,  a  sub- 
stitute for  the  former  sacrifice  of  first-bom  sons,  who  were 
redeemed  by  the  offering  of  the  lamb,  just  as  Isaac  in 
Abram'^s  sacrifice  was  redeemed  by  a  ram.'^  And  a  remark- 
able proof  that  this  human  sficrifice  was  a  national  sacrifice 
of  the  race  to  whom  the  ass  was  especially  sacred  is  given  in 
the  alx)ve  quoted  passage  in  Exodus,  Avhert*  the  only  other 
redemption  allowed  besides  that  of  the  eldest  son  is  that  of 
the  first-born  of  the  ass.*  It  is  these  men  of  the  yellow  race 
who  still  try  in  India,  unless  carefully  watched,  to  revert  to 
the  human  sacrifices  offered  by  their  fathers.  The  most  con- 
spicuous offenders  are  the  Kandhs  of  Orissa,  who  used,  till 
the  practice  was  j)ut  down  about  thirty  years  ago,  regularly  to 
sacrifice  human  victims  called  Merialis.  These  were  purchased 
or  captured  youths  who  were  not  children  of  the  tribe,  and 
thev  were,  till  their  death  as  a  national  sacrifice  was  held  to  be 
necessary,  treated  with  every  luxury  and  indulgence.  The 
victim,  before  being  slain,  was  smeared  with  tunneric  and 
ghee  to  make  him  a  son  of  the  yellow  sons  of  the  bull,  and 
this  paste  was  tliought  to  possess  sovereign  virtues,  and  was 
cjirefully  preserved  by  the  women ;  Avhile  his  blood  was  said 
to  Ix?  offered  exj)rc»ssly  to  produce  redness  in  the  tunneric. 
Every  care  was  taken  to  secure  the  apparent  acquiescence  of 
the  victim  in  his  fate,  and  pieces  of  his  flesh  divided  among  all 
the  householders  were  buried  by  them  in  their  fields.^  These 
sacrifices  still  survive  in  a  sporadic  fonn  in  times  of  droughts 
and  epidemics  among  the  Bhuiyas,  Bhumijes,  and  Kharwars, 


V 


^  Mahabharata  Vana  Parva,  cxxvii,  cxxviii,  p.  386-389. 
'  Ex.  xiii.  11-16. 

•*  Wellhausen,  ProUgomenay  chap.  iii.  §  I.  i  ;  Robertson  Smith,  Religion 
of  the  Semites y  note  F.  p.  445.  *  F)x.  xiii.  13. 

*  Kisley,  Tribes  atid  Castes  of  Bengal ^  *  Kandh,' vol.  i.  pp.  404,  405. 


278  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

and  it  used  to  be  common  among  the  Ooraons  of  Chota 
Nagpore,  and  the  Santals  admit  that  they  used  once  to  kill 
human  victims.  The  use  and  religious  importance  of 
turmeric  as  the  national  plant  of  the  yellow  race,  whose  god 
was  the  Naga  snake,  the  Soma  bird,  is  shown  by  the  offerings 
of  eggs  and  turmeric  made  by  the  Hos  and  M undas  to  the 
Naga  era  or  Naga  gods,^  and  still  more  conspicuously  in  the 
custom  observed  at  the  Brahmin  weddings  of  anointing  the 
bride  and  bridegroom  with  turmeric  sent  by  the  bridegroom, 
showing  that  it  is  one  bom  in  the  days  when  the  father  was 
master  of  the  house,*  and  this  custom  is  similar  to  that 
recorded  in  the  Gobhila  Grihya  Sutra,  where  the  bride  is 
washed  with  Klitaka,  barley  and  beans,  and  has  her  hair 
sprinkled  with  Sura  or  spirits  of  the  first  quality.^  These 
spirits  were  the  Mcidhu  or  honey  spirit  of  the  yellow  or 
barley-growing  r€u;e,  and  that  these  people  who  introduced 
the  marriage  of  mutual  affection  called  by  Manu  the 
Gandharva  marriage,  which  is  still  the  rule  among  the 
Ooraons,  Hos,  and  M undas,  were  the  race  who  made  marriage 
the  leading  incident  in  the  lives  of  the  parents  of  the 
national  children  appears  from  the  stress  laid  upon  yellow, 
the  national  colour  in  the  marriages  of  the  Romans,  who 
were,  like  the  Indian  Gandhari,  descended  from  the  Avolf-god, 
for  the  Roman  bride  had  to  wear  yellow  boots  and  a  yellow 
veil,  and  to  smear  wolfs  fat  on  the  door-j)osts  of  her  future 
home,  as  she  was  lifted  over  the  threshokl  and  taken  as  a 
loved  stranger  into  her  husband'^s  house.  Her  hair  also  Avas 
parted  by  a  spear  point,  just  as  the  Hindu  bride''s  hair  is 
parted  by  her  husband  with  the  sacred  sitidur  or  vermilion, 
which  both  marks  blood  brotherliood,  and  her  acceptance  by 
the  twin  race  of  the  red  men.     It  is  the  care  of  the  hair 

^  Risley,  Tribes  attd  Cast  fs  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  p.  103.  See  also  Mannhardt, 
GerfnanischeMytken,\i^.  1 1  and  1 37,  for  the  egg  placed  in  Alt  Mark  on  May  Day 
under  the  threshold  of  the  byre,  to  protect  the  cows  passing  over  it  from  the 
witches,  and  the  egg  laid  on  EasterThursday  and  placed  in  the  first  sheaf  of  corn. 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  p.  149. 

2  Oldenberg,  Grihya  Sutra  Gobhila,  ii.  10;  S.  B.E.  vol.  xxx.  p.  43. 


ESSAY  III  279 

^hich  opens  a  most  important  chapter  in  the  history  of 
^civilisation.  It  will  be  remembered  that  in  the  Vaja-peya 
sacrifice  the  pari&rut  or  barley  was  bought  from  a  long-haired 
man,  and  this  shows  that  the  early  Tur-vasu  or  barley-growers 
wore  their  hair  long  like  the  Danite  Nazarites  among  the 
Jews.  They  thought  that  the  strength  resided  in  the  hair, 
and  its  loss  was,  as  it  still  is  among  the  Sikhs,  the  descend- 
ants of  the  Takkas,  looked  upon  as  a  great  misfortune,  and 
it  was  the  hair  which  was  offered  to  the  gods  to  avert 
further  misfortune  when  a  near  relative  died.  It  was  also 
thought  that  the  offering  of  the  hair  or  growing  strength  of 
young  men  would  secure  a  return  of  the  spiritual  strength  or 
wisdom  from  heaven,  and  hence  the  ritual  of  hair-cutting, 
was  introduced  by  the  sons  of  the  fig-tree.  It  was  among 
these  people,  who  obliged  all  males  of  sufficient  age  to  l>e 
solemnly  consecrated  to  God'*s  service,  to  have  their  hair  cut 
as  part  of  the  ceremony,  that  the  barbers-surgeons,  the 
priests  and  physicians  of  the  gods,  became  most  important 
ministers  of  the  State.  The  ceremony,  as  we  learn  from  the 
Sankhayana  Grihya  Sutra,  took  place  among  the  Vaishyas, 
the  sons  of  the  Udumbara-tree,  when  the  child  was  seven 
years  old.  The  water  with  which  the  child's  head  was  to  be 
bathed  was  mixed  with  rice,  barley,  sesamum  seeds,  and 
beans,  and  of  the  two  razors  used,  one  was  copper  and  the 
other  of  Udumbara  wood,  showing  that  the  ceremony  was 
one  first  introduced  by  the  Vaishya  sons  of  the  Udumbara- 
tree.  In  sprinkling  the  water  on  the  child's  head  the  barber- 
priest  invoked  on  the  child  the  blessings  of  Jamad-agni,  the 
tAvin-fires  of  the  north  and  south,  of  Kashyapa,  the  father  of 
the  Kushite  race,  and  of  Agastya,  the  star  Canopus,  the  pilot 
of  the  stars.^  It  is  with  the  copper  razor  that  the  sacrifice 
must  be  shaved  before  the  Soma  sacrifice,  and  before  the 
bath  of  initiation.^     The  barber-priests  who  performed  these 

^  Oldenberg,  Grihya  Siitra  Sdnkh,  i.  28,  i  ff;  Gohh,  ii.  9,  I  ff;  S.B.E. 
vol.  xxix.  p.  55  ff,  vol.  XXX.  p.  60  ff. 

-  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  ii.  6,  4,  5,  2  ;  iii.  i,  2,  7-9  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii. 
p.  450,  vol.  xxvi.  p.  7. 


280  THE  KL  LING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

oereiiKinie^  were,  and  are  >till,  the  accredited  priests  of  the 
A^h^iiLs    or   physiciaas    to    the   gods   for   the   Bliandaris, 
the    barber-priots  of  (Jfrissa,   are   the   priests   of   the    five 
Gram  Devatis  or  \illage  goddesses,  the  five  gods  and  seasons 
of  the  Kunhite  year.     Further  proof  that  they  were  priests  of 
the  Ku^hika  Is  given  by  the  &ct  that  they,  together  with  the 
other  castes  who  claim  descent  from  the  tortoise*  the  Kochh, 
the  great  cultivating  caste  of  Eastern  Bengal,  whose  only 
totemL^tic  ancestor  is  Kashyapa,  the  Chasas,  or  cultivators  of 
Orissa,  soas  of  Kashyapa  and  Sal-rishi,  the  holy  fish,  and  the 
Savar>,  sons  of  Sal-Macchi,  the  fish,  all  unite  in  making  the 
binding  together  of  the  hands  of  the  bride  and  brid^p'oom 
with  Kusha  grass  the  sign  of  marriage,  and  not  the  marking 
the  bride's  hair  with  sindur^  which  is  almost  universal  among 
the  other  castes.* 

I  have  now  shown  how  the  yellow  race  of  star-worshippers, 
starting  from  Phrgyia,  gradually  reached  India,  and  there 
made  the  Finnic  air-god  Wainamiiinen,  the  Akkadian  la,-  who 
sends  celestial  fire  to  men,  the  father-god  of  the  tortoise  race, 
the  soul  of  life  living  in  the  immortal  mist,  who  creates  life 
on  earth  by  the  pole  or  fire-drill  of  the  heavens,  formed  of 
the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  and  the  star  Caiiopus,  and 
consecrated,  like  the  trident  of  Pharsi  Pen,  by  the  necklace  of 
fourteen  stars  of  the  Alligator  or  bell-god.  It  is  this  pole 
which,  by  its  continual  revolution  during  the  successive  periods 
of  seven  and  fourteen  days,  creates  the  life-giving  heat  which 
chums  out  the  rains  to  fertilise  the  earth  and  feed  its  rivers. 
I  have  now  to  show  how  they  disseminated  the  creed  and  the 
scheme  of  national  life  which  had  changed  the  Kushites  from 
a  nunil)er  of  disconnected  tribes  and  imperfectly  allied  pro- 
vinces into  a  united  federal  State,  and  made  the  sign  of  the 
Xaga  snake  the  emblem  of  kingly  rank  in  countries  so 
distant  from  one  another  as  India  and  Egjpt.     The  religion 

'   Rislcy,  Trihes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  pp.  93,  192,  463,  497  ;  vol.  ii. 
p.  243 ;  App.  I.  pp.  35,  128. 
■  '•*  Lcnormaiit,  CliaUiu-an  Ma^ic,  p.  247. 


ESSAY  III  281 

iri^    I       ^^  ^^^  tribes  congregated  round  the  mountain  of  the  East 
t^^  I       «>uld  never  have  become  dominant  in  Egypt  if  it  had  been 
^^^  I       brought  by  small  parties  of  traders  travelling  painfully  by 
land  across  the  desert.     The  religious  history  of  Assyria  and 
tb^  I       ^gypt,   moreover,   makes   it   clear   that  the  gods  of  both 
ii^  I       countries  came  there  by  sea,  for  all  these  were  carried  in 
i>  g       ships  at  all  religious  festivals.     To  the  Southern  Akkadians 
^he  Ma  or  ship  was  the  womb  of  the  gods,  and  it  was  this 
*iip  which  bore  la,  the  fish-god,  clothed  in  fish-skins,  who 
from  the  port  of  Eridu  spread  the  knowledge  he  had  gained 
^  the  lands  from  which  he  sailed  all  over  the  country.    This 
^'id  must  have  been  India,  where  the  river-god,  the  alligator, 
^^o  totem  of  the  Maghadas,  bound  together  the  weeks  whose 
.'^^^^lution  made  the  year  of  the  sons  of  Kush  or  Kur.     It 
^   ^Jiis  last  name  which  appears  in  the  Akkadian  Kur,  mean- 
^^  both  the  mountain  land  of  the  East  and  the  land  of  the 
^^•;ix)ise.     It  was  thence  that  the  Akkadians  got  the  cotton 
^^^th,  called  in  old  Babylonian  writings,  Sepat  Kurri,  or  cloth 
,^^  Kur.     This  cotton  must  have  been  grown,  as  it  still  is,  by 
^:^^«  Kurmis  living  in  Kandesh,  and  on  the  shores  of  the  Gulf  of 
^^-^mbay,  the  country  called  in  the  Mahabharata  Kar-pasika,^ 
must  have  been  brought  in  ships  to  the  port  at  Eridu. 
ut  where  were  the  ships  that  brought  it  built  ?     No  ship- 
\dlding  timber  grows  in  the  Delta  of  the  Euphrates  or  any- 
nearer  it  than  the  hills  of  Shushan,  where  there  are 
The  Euphratean  boats  were  round  skiffs,  called  hi/a^ 
^^Xiade  of  skins  covering  a  timber  framework,  and  could  never 
Viave  been  the  model  for  ocean-traversing  ships.     No  ship- 
\)uilding  timber  whatever  grows  within  easy  reacli  of  the  sea 
£x>m  the  Delta  of  the  Indus  on  the  east,  to  the  Gulf  of  Suez 
on  the  west,  and  the  first  shipbuilders  must  have  made  their 
first  experiments  in  the  art  with  timber  ready  to  their  hands. 
The  only  trees  of  Arabia  are  the  Mimosa  nilotica  or  Gum 
Arabic,  the  Frankincense-tree  {Boswellia  Carterii),  the  palm, 

*  Sabha  {Dyuta  Parva)  li.  p.  141  ;  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures/or  1887,  Lcct. 
iU.  p.  138. 


282  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  Southern  larch  or  ithel,  the  sycamore,  chestnuts,  and 
several  other  soft-wood  trees,^  and  no  ships,  except  dug-outs 
hollowed  out  of  the  palm  trees,  could  be  built  with  these 
trees,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  trees  of  Southern 
Persia.     The  very  ancient  inscriptions  at  Gir-su  or  Lugash 
written  in  tlie  oldest  Akkadian  form  of  cuneiform  script,  give 
lists  of  the  imports  into  the  Euphratean  Delta,  which  con- 
firm these  conclusions,  for  timber  and  stones  form  the  most  im- 
portant part  of  the  ship  cargoes.      The  countries  whence 
goods  were  received  were  Magana  the   Sinaitic  Peninsula, 
Kur-melukha  Southern  Arabia,  Gubi-in-ki,  called  the  Kur, 
and  Nituk,  the  island  of  Dilmun  at  the  mouth  of  the  Persian 
Gulf,  the  modern  Bahrein,  but  no  imports  are  named  as 
coming  from  the  last  j)l€u;e.     Those  from  the  West,  which 
must  have  come  by  sea  from  the  Red  Sea,  the  Gulf  of  Suez, 
and  the  Sinaitic  Peninsula  were  cedar  trees  from  Amarrum, 
the  'cedar  mountain,**  which  must  he  Lebanon.     VNagul"* 
stone,  used  for  the  tables  and  foundations  of  the  Temple  of 
the  Fifty,  from  Shamalum,  the  mountains  of  Minua  and 
Kazalla.       Green  diorite  (Dag-kal)  from  the  mountains  of 
Magan  (Sinai)  and  Alabaster  (Sh'-gnl)  from  Ti-danum,  the 
mountains    of  the  West.      The   diorite  was    used   for  the 
statue  of  Gud-ia,  as  we  are  told  by  an  inscription  on  it, 
and  this  statue,  which  evidently  belongs  to  the  same  school 
of  art  as  that  of  King  Kephren  of  Egypt  of  the  fourth 
dynasty,  must,  as  is   proved  by  its   inferior  workmanship, 
liave  been  made  in  the  infancy  of  Sinaitic  art,'  for  the  wealthy 
priest-king  (Patesi),  who  imported  the  stone  for  the  statue, 
must   liave   also    brought  to  the  stoneless  country  of  the 
Euphratean  Delta,  wliere  stone-cutting  was  an  unknown  art, 
the  best  Sinaitic  artists  available. 

Tlie  imports  from  the  North,  copper  {urntd)  and  tin  (anna\ 
brought    from    Ki-gal-addaki,   the    mountains   of    Kimash, 

^  Encyclopicdia  Britannicay   Ninth   Edition,   vol.   ii.,    'Arabia,*   p.    236; 
Stanley,  Sinai  and  Palestine j  p.  18-24. 
^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  pp.  32,  '^'^, 


ESSAY  III  283 

show  that  they  belong  to  the  Bronze  Age.    These  must  liave 
come  down  the  Euphrates  from  the  slopes  of  the  Caucasus  in 
Georgia,  for  it  is  only  there,  and  on  the  northern  slopes  of 
the  Himalaya  near  Bamian,  that  tin  has  yet  been  worked 
in  Northern  Asia.^     Besides  these  metals,  asphalt  {garmda) 
was  imported  from  Mad-ga,  the  land  of  the  M edes,  from  the 
river  Garruda,  the  river  Araxes,  and  the  petroleum  country. 
Prom  the  south-west,  that  is,  from  Kur-miluk-ka,  came  gold- 
dust,  some  of  which  was  brought  from  the  mountain  land  of 
Gha-ghu-um,  also  Usha-wood,  and  as  this  means  the  wood 
of  the  eight  (usha),  it  must  be  frankincense  to  be  burned  in 
the  temples,  for  it  was  the  produce  of  the  tree  called  Gisli- 
kal,  the  mighty  (kal)  tree  (gish\  which  was  to  the  Egyptians 
"the  most  precious  product  of  Southern  Arabia,  called  the 
land  of  Punt.     There  are  other  imports  coming  from  places 
I  cannot  identify ;  Zabanum  and  Tu-bulum,  from  the  city  of 
TJr-saki,  and  the  stone  Na-bu-a,  brought  in  great  ships  from 
Sarmi,  but  unless  they  are  precious  stones  and  valuable 
>!«rood,  like  sandal  wood,  they  must  apparently  have  come 
from  the  West.     The  only  remaining  imports  are  those  from 
the  land  of  Kur,  called  Gu-bi-in-ki,  the  land  of  the  wood 
GhdUika^  wliich  was  used  for  beams  for  the  temple.-     This 
country  has  been  identified  by  Amiaud  with  Egypt ;  but 
the  arid  rock-bound  coast  of  Egypt  bordering  the  Red  Sea 
could  supply  no  timber  for  beams,  nor  is  there  any  reason  to 
believe   that   a   depot   of  timber  from   the   mountains    of 
Abyssinia  was  ever  established  on  the  Red  Sea  coast.     But 
the  abrupt  slopes  of  the  mountain  land  of  the  East  over- 
looking the  ancient  ports  of  Prag-jyotisha  {Baragyza)  on 
the  Nerbudda,  and  Surparaka  (Surat),  on  the  Tapti  were 
clothed  with  forests  coming  down  close  to  the  sea,  which 
yielded,  among  other  kinds  of  wood  fit  for  ship-building, 
ample  supplies   of  teak,   which   has   edways,   owing   to   its 

^  S.  Laing,  Human  Origins ^  p.  1 71. 

'■^  F.    Hommel,   Gesckichte  Bai*yloniens  und  Assyriens,  book  i,  §  iii.    i, 
p.  326. 


284  THE  RL  LING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

resistance  to  the  attacks  of  nmriiie  insects  and  white 
ants,  l)een  looked  on  as  the  best  of  timber  for  all  kinds  of 
building,  and  it  is  of  teak  that  Arab  ships  are  now  built. 
Tliis  must,  it  seems  to  me,  have  been  the  Ghalaka  wood  of 
which  beams  were  brought  to  Telloh.  The  fertile  lands 
overlooked  bv  the  hills  of  Malwa,  and  of  the  Xerbudda  and 
Tapti  valleys,  were,  as  the  names  Malwa  and  Mallararashtra 
tell  us,  the  favourite  settlements  of  the  mountain-race  of  the 
Malli,  the  Tur-vasu  of  the  RigNeda,  and  it  was  there  that 
the  cultivating  Kurmis,  who  still  form  the  largest  part  of 
the  population,  founded  the  prosperous  States  of  the  sons  of 
the  Kur,  formed  on  the  Kushika  principle  of  an  aggregation 
of  provinces  under  a  central  ruler.  It  was  the  ancestors  of 
these  people,  the  early  matriarchal  tribes,  who  first  learned 
the  art  of  na>'igation  in  boats  made  from  the  forest  timber 
lining  the  Indian  rivers,  who  first  made  coasting  voyages, 
and  took  to  Eridu  and  Eg}'pt  the  Indian  system  of  village 
communities,  and  it  was  their  successors  who,  trusting  to  the 
guidance  of  the  stars  and  the  lessons  learned  by  their  fathers 
when  tracking  their  way  through  the  desert,  became  still 
Iwlder  navigators  and  keener  traders  than  the  early  coasting 
races.  It  was  these  sons  of  the  alligator,  Maga  and  Puse,  who 
made  their  father-god  Makara,  the  dolphin,  instead  of  the 
alligator.^  This  dolphin  was  called  the  horned-fish,  from  its 
two  conspicuous  scjlhe-shaped  fore-fins  and  its  curved  back- 
fin,  and  it  was  the  fish  that  guided  Manu  over  the  waters 
of  the  Flood.-  But  the  tribal  traditions  disclosed  by  totem- 
istic  genealogy  trace  the  guiding-fish,  which  was  first, 
according  to  the  Bnihmanas,  the  fish  found  in  the  water 
brought  to  Manu  to  wash  his  hands,^  to  a  still  earlier  period 
than  that  of  the  Flood  legend.  I  have  already  sho\\Ti  that 
of  the  Kushika  tribes  which  make  the  ro|K»  of  Kusha  grass 

^  Makara  is  called  the  dolphin  in  the  Vnja  Saneya  Samhita^  pp.  24,  25  ; 
Tittlrya  Samhita,  5,  5,  13,  i  ;  Zimmer,  Altindisches  Lehen,  chap.  iii.  p.  97. 
-  De  Gtibematis  Die  Thiere,  German  Translation,  Part  iii.  chap.  i.  p.  607. 
'  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  i,  8,  I,  i  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  216. 


ESSAY  III  285 

the  bond  of  marriage,  two — the  Chasas  aiid  Savars — claim 
descent  from  the  Salrishi  and  Sal-raaccli,  the  Sal-priest  and 
the  Sal-fish,  and  of  these  the  Savars  are  a  peculiariy  represent- 
ative tribe.     They  still  retain  the  name  of  the  Sabarae  of 
Ptolemy,  and  the  Suari  of  Pliny,  who  places  them  next  to 
the  Monedes  or  Mundas,  making  them  the  rulers  of  Eastern 
Bengal  and  the  Gangetic  valley,  wliile  tlie  Mundas  ruled  the 
Western  hills.^    They  are  also  the  Sau-viras  of  Baudliayana,^ 
and  the  Su-varna  who  ruled  the  delta  of  the  Indus,  and  are 
consequently  the  Shus  of  Shushan,  and  the  Indian  Suars  or 
Souris  who  still,  like  the  Akkadians  of  Nipur,  call  the  sun-god 
Bel.^     The  Sal  or  fish  is  also  a  totem  of  the  Dakshin  Rar-hi, 
on  the  Southern  Kayasths,*  and  it  is  also  a  totem  of  the  Mun- 
das, Ooraons,  Khandaits,  Koras,  Mais,  Bhumij,  and  Lobars,^ 
vhile  the  Bauris  claim  to  be  the  sons  of  the  red-backed 
heron.^     I  have  shown  that  these  tribes  were  also  once  the 
sons  of  the  Sal-tree,  and  tlie  change  of  totemistic  descent 
A'om  the  Sal- tree  to  the  Sal-fish  and  the  fish-eating  bird, 
marks  the  change  in  creed,  which  made  the  soul  of  life  to 
<lwell  in  the  life-giving  water,  and  not  in  the  mother- tree, 
and   made  the  fish  the   holy  symbol  and  living  casket  of 
the  immortal  life-infusing  spirit,  dwelling  in  the  mother- 
ocean.     The  fish-god,  Matsya,  and  his  sister  Satyavati,  she 
who  is  possessed  of  truth  (satya\  the  grandmother  of  the 
Kauravyas  and  Pandavas,  were,  as  we  are  told  in  the  Maha- 
bharata,  miraculously  begotten  in  the  Sakti  mountains  by 
the  Basque   father-god   Vasu  and   the  Apsara  Adrika,   the 
rock,  the  Hindu    Salagramma  or   fire-yielding   stone,   and 
carried  in  her  womb  to  the  river  Yamuna,  or  the  twin-river. '^ 

^  Cunningham,  AncietU  Geography  of  India^  pp.  50,  109. 

*  Biihler,  Baiidhdyana,  i,  I,  13  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xiv.  p.  148. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  ii.  pp.  102,  103.     The  Sauris  of 
Chuttisgurh  in  the  Central  Provinces  all  call  the  sun  Bel. 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  ii.  p.  917,  s.v.  SSl. 

*  Ibid.  vol.  ii.  pp.  217,  218,  s.v.  *  Sal,  Sal  or  Saula,  Sal-machh,  Sal-rishi.' 

*  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  79. 

^  Mahabharata  Adi  {Adivan  Shavatama)  Parva,  Ixiii.  pp.  174-175. 


286  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEVIES 

He  was  thus  the  father  of  the  twin  races,  the  sons  of  the 
Tur,  and  of  Yadu  or  the  holy  Ya,  and  it  is  only  in  Indian 
national  legends  and  genealogies  that  we  can  trace  the  con- 
tinuous descent  from  the  sons  of  the  Sal- tree  to  the  sons  of 
the  Sal-fish,  the  father-god   of  the  Shus  of  Shushan,  who 
worshipped  the  great  Susi-Nag.     It  was  this  fish-god  who 
was  worshipped  by  the  Sumerians  as  Sallimannu,  the  fish, 
the  god  called  by  the  Assyrians  *  the  king  of  the.  gods,'  who 
was  no  other  than  the  great  la.^      He  was  the  Assyrian  god 
Assor,  the  fish-god,  the  patron-god  of  Nineveh,  of  which  the 
ideogram  means  fish-town,^  and  the  god  Assur  called  Dag-on, 
or  the  revered  one,  on  the  coasts  of  Palestine,  the  patron-god 
of  Sidon,  a  name  which,  like  Nineveh,  means  fish-town.     The 
fish-mother,  the  counterpart  of  the  Hindu  Adriksi  in  Egypt, 
is  Hat-mehit,  the  wife  of  Osiris  of  Mendes,  who  bears  the 
fish  sign  on  her  head,^  and  who  is  the  wife  of  the  goat-ram- 
god,  who  has  in  him  the  seed  of  the  bull,  and  who  is  also 
the  crocodiie-god  Sebek.     The  fish-god  was  the  god  Posei- 
don of  the  Greeks,  who  is  depicted  as  the  god  of  the  lotus 
and  of  the  thunny-fish,  and  also  Apollo,  the  dolphin,  who 
led    the    ship    which   brought    from    Knossus    in   Crete    to 
Krissii,  the  port  of  Delphi,   the    priest   Chrysothemis,   tlie 
speaker   of   the   golden    (%pu<709)   judgments    (^e/it?),    the 
singers  and  prophets  {irpo^T^rai)^  who  accompanied  him  to 
the  holy  shrine  of  the  great  snake-god  Pytho,  the  god  of  the 
abyss  (ySu^o?)  of  darkness.     It  was  they  who  made  it  the 
shrine  of  tlie  fish-god,    whose    image   as    the   dolpliin  was 
marked  on  the  Delphian  coins,"*  and  it  was  the  ideogram  of 
the  fish-god,  the  mystic  lx^^^9  which  was  the  sacred  symbol 
divinity  among  the  early  Christians.      These   people  who 
put  to  sea  under  the  guidance  of  the  fish-god  must  have 
chosen  for  their  voyages  the  season  of  calms  following  the 

^  Sayce,  Hibbcrt  lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  58. 
-  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary,  No.  1 78. 
^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^-Egypter,  p.  310, 
••  Miiller,  Die  Dorier,  book  ii.  chap.  vii.  §  6,  p.  318,  chap.  i.  §  7  and  8, 
pp.  211-214. 


ESSAY  111  287 

raiqs,  that  sacred  to  the  Pleiades  or  Krittakas  who  follow  the 
Ashvins  in  the  list  of  Hindu  months.     The  leading  star  in 
the  constellation  is  called  by  the  Hindus  Amba,  the  mother,^ 
and  this  is  the  mother  star,  of  the  Kushite  race,  for  their 
father  Kush-amba,  the  tortoise  (kush)  and  the  mother-star 
{ambd)y  was  the  third  son  of  Vasu,  who  was  followed  by  the 
twins  Mavellya,  the  mountain  race,  called  Tur-vashu  in  the 
Ya-yati  genealogy  and  Yadu."     Tlieir  mother  city  is  Kush- 
ambi,  guarding  the  Plaksha  lake,  the  j  unction  of  the  Jumna 
and  Ganges,  where  Ayu,  the  son  of  Ur-vashi,  was  bom,  the 
city  where  Chakra,  the  eighth  king  in  mythical  descent  from 
Arjuna  the  Pandava,  the  god  of  the  Chakra,  or  wheel  of 
time,  fixed  his  capital.*      The   stars  of  the   Pleiades,  the 
mother-constellation,  lay  within  the  head  of  Taurus  (as  de- 
picted by  Ptolemy),  which  was  called  by  the  Hindus  Piishya, 
or  the  son  of  Push,  the  alligator,  and  it  was  these  stars 
'^rhich  were  the  parent  stars  of  the  voyagers  in  the  mother 
5$hip    Argo,   piloted    by   Agastya,   the    star    Canopus,   the 
Karbanit  of  the  Assyrian,  and  Karbana  of  the  Egyptian 
^tronomers.     He  was  the  ruling  star  of  the  city  called  by 
lis  name,  which  was  the  chief  northern  port  of  Egypt  before 
"the  days  of  Alexandria.     The  Pleiades,  or  Hindu  Amba,  is 
<»lled  by  the  Hebrews  Kimah,  the  Assyrian  Kimta,  a  name 
derived  from  the  root  kamv^  to  tie,  to  bind.*     Tliis  name 
meant  the  stars  of  the  family,  that  is,  the  mother-stars  of 
the  sons  of  the  house-pole,  and  this  coincides  with  the  Santal 
name  of  the  Pleiades  Sar-en,  which  reproduces  that  of  their 
Northern  mother-goddess,  Sar.    These  six  stars  reproduced  in 
heaven  the  six  gods  the  Maga  race  worshipped  as  the  five 
seasons  of  the  Hindu  year  and  Pandhari,  the  god  of  the 

^  Tail,  Sam.  iv.   5,  I  ;  Idtd.  Brah,  iii.   I,  4,  i  ;  Max  MUller,  Preface  to 
vol.  iv.  of  his  edition  of  the  Rigveda,  p.  32. 
'  Mahabrarata  Adi  {adi  van^avatama)  Parva,  Ixiii.  p.  173. 

*  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India^  pp.  391-392. 

*  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  *The  Tablets  of  the  Thirty  Stars,*  Proceedings 
of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaology,  Feb.  1 890,  Star  iv.  ;  Delitzsch,  The 
Hebrew  Language  in  the  Light  of  Assyrian  Research^  pp.  69-70. 


288  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

fair  (pandu)  people,  the  moon  and  rain  god,  Mitra-Varuna 
and  Apollo-Artemis.  They  were  tlie  six  sons  of  la  and  the 
six  gods  of  the  Turanian  Gonds,  who  divide  the  Gonds  into 
worshipj>ers  of  four,  five,  six  (saha\  and  seven  (sat)  gods. 
It  was  thence  that  thev  derived  their  name  Ashura  from  the 
Akkadian  a/fh  or  a*,  six,  and  made  Aslmra-Mazda,  the  Asura 
of  the  Zendavesta,  the  supreme  god  of  the  star- worshipping 
races,  substituting  for  the  five-rayed  star  of  the  Egyptians 

}l^,  the  six  myed  Cypriote  star,  ^  which,  with  the  crescent 
moon,  has  always  been  borne  on  the  Turkish  banners.^ 
The  race  descended  from  the  six-star  mothers  M'as  that 
formed  by  tlie  union  of  the  cultivating  NYigas,  whose  gods 
were  the  gods  of  the  five  seasons,  with  the  trading  sons  of 
the  ass,  the  navigating  Shus  or  Pha»nicians,  the  red  men  who 
worshipped  the  ruler  of  heaven,  and  they  depicted  their 
descent  in  astral  genealogy  by  calling  the  six  stars  of  the 
Pleiades  and  its  enclosing  constellation  Taurus  or  Piishya  (the 

moon-bull   with    the   three  eyc^s  and  two  horns  Vy  ),  the 

stars  of  the  mother-cow,  the  Akkadian  Am,  the  wild  bull 
or  cow.-  They  were  the  mother-stars  of  the  race  whose  cn>d 
was  Varuna,  the  Greek  ovpavof;^  the  god  of  conjugal  union,' 
and  hence  they  were  called  in  Greece  the  l^eleiades  (TreXei- 
aSe^;)  or  doves,  a  name  given  to  them  by  Hesiod,  Pindar, 
and  Athena'us.*  l^indar  tells  us  that  they  brought  nectar 
to  the  young  Zeus  in  Crete,  whence  the  fish-god  came  to 
Delphi,  llius  the  dove  became  the  sacred  bird  of  the  new 
faith  proclaimed  by  the  fish-god — the  belief  in  a  god  of  in- 
flexible righteousness,  who  ordained  and  upholds  the  regular 
and  unvaiying  succession  of  natural  phenomena.      It  was 

^  The  Hittilc  star  has  also  six  points.  It  denotes  the  sons  of  the  pole,  Tur 
and  rain-cross,  see  Essay  I.,  p.  iS. 

2  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  No.  242,  also  Nos.  232,  233.  The 
sign  given  in  the  text  is  that  used  to  denote  the  wild  bull  in  the  Telloh 
inscriptions,  the  sign  of  the  mother  Leah,  the  wild  cow,  the  Akkadian  Am, 
the  Hindu  Amba. 

•«  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,  ii.  5,  3,  23;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  398. 

*  Hesiod,  Frag,  44,  x««/^/>ta«  ^ivowri  ircXeLades ;  Pindar,  Nem,  ii.  17; 
Athenxus,  xi. 


ESSAY  III  289 

also  the  sacred  bird  of  Ashtoreth,  the  moon-goddess,  the 
heavenly  form  of  Istar.^     It  was  the  dove  Yonah,^  the  Hebrew 
prophet  Jonah,  brought  to  Nineveh  by  the  fish-god,  who 
made  the  city  once  sacred  to  Istar,  the  city  of  the  divine 
fish,  the  oracle  {kiia)  of  Merodach  or  Marduk,  the  bull-god.^ 
Noah,  in  the  Hebrew  Flood  legend,  which  must  have  formed 
part  of  the  national  mythical  history  of  a  navigating  race, 
sent  forth  the  dove  after  the  earlier  prophet-bird,  the  raven, 
had  failed  in  his  mission ;  and  it  was  the  dove  which  told 
Noah  of  the  birth  of  the  holy  land,  of  the  mother  Ida,  the 
cow-mother,  which  had  risen  from  the  waters  after  the  close 
of  the  period  of  gestation  on  the  first  day  of  the  tenth  solar 
month.     The  dove  also  brought  the  leaf  of  the  olive-tree  ^ 
M^hich  became  the  mother-tree  of  the  Semite  confederacy, 
vvhich  was  first  formed  in  Palestine,  the  land  of  the  olive- 
tree.     This  was  the  tree  sacred  to  Athene,  the  goddess  of 
t:lie   flower  {av6os;\  who,  like   the   children   of  Manu,   the 
thinker,  the  Hindu  father  of  men,  was  bom  from  the  brain 
cjf  Zeus.     It  was  before  the  rainy  season  and  the  beginning 
c^f  the  Hindu  month  Assar,  sacred  to  the  fish-god  Assor, 
^hat  he  created  the  world  in  the  six  days  sacred  to  the  six 
^ods  of  the  Ashura  ritual,  and  rested  from  his  labours  on 
the  seventh  day.     It  was  then   that  Noah,  meaning  rest^ 
launched  on  the  annual  flood,  the  ship  bearing  the  only  son 
^f  life,  Dumu-zi,  who  was,  as  the  first  year,  to  be  the  parent  of 
the  sons    of  the  god  of  righteousness.      It  was  he  who  led 
the  heavenly  ship  Argo,  and  who  became  in  Eridu  la-Khan, 
or  la,  the  fish,  and  in  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  the  god  Assor, 
who,  instead  of  the  Sar,  or  rain-god  of  the  earlier  theology, 
became  the  As-sar  or  six  Sars,  whose  ideogram  is  formed  by 

the  meeting  of  six  lines  0\.^     It  was  Gad  and  Ashur,  the 

*  Saycc,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  271. 

'•^  Gesenius,  Thesaurus^  p.  587. 

^  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary ^  Nos.  178,  442* 

■*  Gen.  vi.  5-10;  viii.  5. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary,  No.  242. 

19 


290  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

sons  of  Zilpah,  the  handmaid  of  I^ah,  the  wild  cow,  Gad 
Iwing  the  seventh  and  Asliur  the  eighth  of  Jacobus  sons,  who 
formed,  with  the  seven  children  of  Leah,  the  number  nine 
of  the  iffiffij  the  gods  of  heaven  in  Akkadian  and  Hindu 
theology.^  The  nine  were  formed  by  the  first  pair  of  the 
primaeval  gods  of  heaven,  the  sacred  twins,  Day  and  Night, 
who  in  tlie  Ashura  cosmogony,  begot  the  seven  days  of  the 
week.  And  it  was  this  descent  from  the  twins  and  the 
wedded  pair  which  based  all  their  theology  on  pairs,  and 
made  them,  as  in  the  controversy  cited  in  the  Brahmana^i, 
contend  for  the  sanctity  of  pairs,  as  opposed  to  the  odd 
numbers  Mhich  Indra  held  to  be  divine.^  The  coming  of 
the  god  Assor,  we  are  told  in  a  Babylonian  inscription, 
coincided  ^^^ith  the  birth  of  the  land  of  Assur,^  and  Assur 
was  the  capital  of  the  land  called  Gutium,  or  tlie  land  of 
Gud,  the  bull.*  Tliis  was  the  land  colonised  by  the  sons  of 
the  northern  bull,  the  Hebrew  tribe  of  Gad,  who  built  not 
only  the  cities  of  Bashan,  but  also  tliose  of  Assyria,  and  were 
the  great  builders  of  the  ancient  world,  just  as  their  later 
descendants  the  Goths,  the  modem  sons  of  the  bull,  were 
the  founders  of  Gothic  architecture  and  the  ancestors  of  the 
English  sons  of  John  Bull.  They  replaced  the  Tur,  the 
stone  pillar,  the  Egyptian  obelisk,  by  the  temple,  the  home 
and  synilwl  of  the  creating  god,  who  had  been  tlie  pillar  of 
the  house.  But  in  their  eyes  the  sign  of  the  father-god  was 
not  the  central  pillar,  but  the  two  door-posts,  and  hence 
they  called  the  temple  gates  Babel,  or  the  gates  (Bab)  of  god 
(el).  This  gate  was  guarded  by  the  holy  twins,  the  pillars 
Jachin  and  Boaz  of  Solomon*'s  temple,^  the  Gog  and  Magc^g 
of  our  Guildhall,  and  the  supporters  of  our  coats-of-arms. 
They,  as  the  kerubi  or  winged -bulls,  watched  the  gates  of  the 
Assyrian  temples  and  those  of  Paradise  in  Genesis.     It  is 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  I-»ect.  iii.  p.141  note  I. 

-  Eggcling,  Sat.  Brah,  i.  5,  4,  6-1 1  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  153-154. 
^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1 887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  166. 

*  Lenormanl,  Chaldisau  Magic^  pp.  "^^n^  334.  ^  ,  yj^w^^  vii.  21. 


ESSAY  III  291 

the  door-posts,  and  night  and  morning,  which  are  invoked  in 
the  fifth  and  sixth  verses  of  the  Apri  sacrificial  hymns  of  the 
Ashuras  in  the  Rigveda.    And  in  the  Genesis  genealogy  of  the 
kings  of  Edom,  the  land  of  the  red  man,  we  find  that  the 
first  king  is  the  inspired  priest  or  prophet  of  an  open-air  altar ; 
the  second  the  priest  of  the  consecrated  temple  of  the  holy 
gate;   and  the  third  the  priest-king  of  the  Hus  or  Shus. 
The  first  king  is  Bela,  the  son  of  Beor,  the  priest-prophet 
Balaam,  the  son  of  Beor  in  the  Book  of  Numbers,  who  built 
the  altars  for  his  worship,  and  also  Bela,  the  son  of  Benjamin 
dn  Chronicles,  and  the  brother  of  Ash-bel.    He  was  succeeded 
T)y  Jobab,  the  gate  (bcA)  of  Yo  or  Yah,  the  son  of  Zerah,  the 
"father  of  the  red  race  and  the  twin  son  of  Tamar,  the  palm- 
tree,  and  his  successor  was  Husham  ^  of  the  land  of  Teman- 
ites  or  Southern  Arabia.^     Husham  is  the  son  of  Dan,  the 
Judge,  and  the  Husrava  and  Su-shrava  of  the  Zendavesta 
and  Rigveda.      The  land  of  the  Temanites  is  the  land  of 
the  men  bom  of  the  Akkadian  Te,  called  in  the  Assyrian 
Te-mennu,  or  the  foundation  of  life,  and  its  ideogram  means 
'the  lord  of  seed."^      It  was  tlie  land   of  Arabia,   of  the 
irrigating    and    building   Minseans   and    star  -  worshipping 
Sabaeans,  the  land   of  the  Queen   of  Slieba,  or  the  num- 
ber seven  {sh€ba\  who  made  Sin,  the  moon- mother  of  the 
Shus,  their   mother-goddess,   and    Sinai,   the   mountain   of 
Sin,   their  mother-mountain,   and   who   thus   established  a 
fresh  confederacy  of  the  Semites  grouped  round  the  mother- 
mountain  of  the  West,  to  rival  that  of  the  Kushite  moun- 
tain of  the  East.     It  is  their  theology  which  is  expressed 
in  the  names   of  the   months   of  the   Akkadian  year  and 
zodiac,  beginning  with  those  called  Te-te,  the  two  founda- 
tions, the  door-posts,  or  Khas-sidi,  the  bull  of  increase,  and 
Enga,  the  making  of  bricks,  or  Mas-mas,  the  pair  of  bricks, 
culminating  in  the  sixth  montli  Dul-azag,  the  pleasant  hill,  or 

^  Gen.  xxxvi.  32-35,  xxxviii.  30;  Numb.  xxii.  5  ;  i  Chron.  viii.  i. 

^  Tema  is  the  name  of  Arabia  ;  Isa.  xxi.  14. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  320,  327,  427. 


292  THE  RULING  llACES  OF  rilEHISTOHIC  TIMES 

l^ulkii,  the  holy  altar,  and  ending  in  the  month  Bara-ziggar, 
the  altar  of  the  creator.  It  was  on  this  altar  that  the  Old  Year, 
the  year  reckoned  by  the  building  race,  the  sons  of  the  bull, 
was  sacrificed  to  produce  the  New  Year.  It  was  the  settle- 
ment of  the  Hindu  navigators  in  the  holy  island  of  Dilmun  in 
the  IVrsian  Gulf,  and  at  Eridu,  M'hich  first  brought  them  in 
ccmtiu^t  with  the  Arabian  star-gazers  and  merchants,  the  sons 
of  the  ass,  and  it  was  the  union  of  these  races  vnth  the  sons 
of  the  bull  in  the  ancient  city  of  Ur,  which  first  fonned  the 
Semite  nu*e.  '^Fhe  fundamental  conception  l>equeathed  by  the 
Dunava,  or  worshippers  of  the  eleven  gods,  was,  as  I  have 
Hhown,  that  of  the  meridian  pole,  uniting  the  land  of  the 
HoiiH  of  Kush,  the  tortoise,  with  the  gods  of  heaven ;  and  it 
was  this  meridian  pole,  the  Tur  of  the  Akkadians,  which  the 
Dravidian  traders  of  India  brought  with  them  to  Eridu. 
Its  two  ideograms  >-yyy<  ff  and  »-yyy<  ^]  lx)th  begin  with 
Mu»  initial  sign  of  Nun,  the  Great  Spirit  ^]J]^  followed  by 
that  of  divinity  »-  in  the  ideogram  of  Nun,  and  by  ^, 
lord,  in  thosi»  of  Tur;  and  these  last  mean,  Hhe  Nun,  the 
lord  of  the  divine  enclosure,  of  the  one  king  or  god,"*  and 
'  the  Nun,  the  lord  of  the  divine  enclosure  of  Adar  the  fire- 
god.'*  'i'luis  the  meridian-pole  is  the  Nun,  the  god  and  soul 
of  life,  both  to  the  Akkadians  and  Egyptians,  called  in  the 
Egyptian  Book  of  the  Dead,  'the  prinueval  water  Nun,  the 
Hupreim*  god,  the  self-existent/-  This  is  the  life-giving 
breath  of  (iod  which  moved  on  the  face  of  the  waters,  the 
mist,  which  in  the  Higveda  entered  the  womb  of  the  year- 
cow,  t\s  the  s])irit  of  (tod,  and  gave  life  to  the  year-calf.^ 
'i'his  'i'nr,  the  j)ole,  gave  birth  to  the  Greek  Tauros  (raO/Jo^), 
the  bull,  the  son  of  the  Tur,  and  also  to  the  Chaldaic  Tur, 
the  bull.  It  was  he  who  plougheil  the  heavenly  fields,  and 
on  earth  tmd  out,  when  cut,  the  yearV  corn,  placed  round 

'  Sayor,  ./.o;rr/iiw  Gra*nWiir  Syllahaty^  Nos.  I.  64.  66,  67,  329,  427. 
'-'11.    niu^srh,  AW^o'i^M  toti/  AfythoK\i^'e  licr  AlUtt   ^gypter,  pp.  21-25, 
ia(»:  Hook  nf  the  Dc.iil,  chap.  xvii. 
^  (ion.  i.  2  ;  Kit*veila,  i.  164,  8. 


ESSAY  III  293 

the  pole  in  the  centre  of  the  threshing-floor.     This  simile, 

joined  to  that  which  made  the  heaveiily  pole  revolve  with 

the  passing  days  and  weeks,  made  the  bull,  the  Chaldaic 

Tur,  the  revolving  pole,  and  the  Tor,  that  which  goes  round 

in  a  circle.     It  was  this  bull,  the  Hebrew  Shur,  which  was 

the  wild  bull  of  the  mountains,  the  bull  of  the  rock ;  and 

the  two  names  appear  in  that  of  Tyre  and  the  Arabic  Tor  or 

Tur,  a  mountain,  for  the  name  of  Tyre  wasTsur  or  Tsor,  the 

*  being  preserved  in  the  names  Sarra  and  Sara,  given  to  it  by 

£nnius  and  Plautus,  and  the  name  came  to  mean,  as  we  know 

Irom  the  Greek  rvpo^^  both  the  mountain  and  the  pole  Tur, 

the  tower  of  god,  and  the  root  whence  it  comes  means  'to  bind/^ 

TTie  sons  of  the  binding  Tur  were  the  Indian  Tur-vashu, 

the  Zend  Tur-anians,  the  mariners  of  Asia  Minor  called  by 

"^he  Egyptians   Tour-sha,^  the  sea-traders  of  the  Mediter- 

^»^nean  called  the  Tur-sene  of  Lydia,  the  Tur-sena  or  Tyr- 

iwhenians  of  Lemnos  and   Etruria,   who   spoke   a  language 

closely  allied  to  that  of  the  Akkadians.    That  their  god  Tur 

^was  worshipped  in  Cyprus  and  Asia  Minor  is  proved  by  the 

i:erra-cotta  whorl  found  in  one  of  the  settlements  on  the  site 

of  Troy,  dedicated  in  Cypriote  characters  to  Patorl  Turi, 

the  father  Tur,  who  gave  his  name  to  the  Phrygian  city  of 

Turiaion.     The  great  antiquity  of  the  settlement  where  this 

whorl  was  found  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  though  some 

bronze  knives  and  instruments  were  found  in  it,  by  far  the 

greater  number  of  the  axes,  saws,  and  knives  were  of  stone,  and 

the  pottery,  though  similar  to  that  at  Mycenae,  is  of  a  more 

archaic  type.^     These  people,  who  had  adopted  the  Cypriote 

six-rayed  star  as  their  national  sign,  had  besides  the  god  Tur 

brought  with  them  from  India  the  peacock,  sacred  to  the 

Grecian  moon-goddess  Hera,  the  Latin  Juno  and  the  Etruscan 

Uni.     This  bird  is  one  of  the  four  totems  of  the  great  Bhar 

*  Gcscnius,   Thesaurus^  *  Tur  and  Shur,*  pp.   1382,  1498,  1499,   1160-1  ; 
Stanley,  Sinai  and  Palestine y  p.  498. 

*  Maspero,  Ancient  Egypt  and  Assyria,  p.  164. 

'  Schuchhardt's  Schliemann's  Excavations,  App.  I.  pp.  331,  332,  334. 


294  THE  IIULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tribe,  the  Bhiirata  of  Bharata  varsha.  These  are  (1)  the  Bans- 
rishi,  the  bamboo  priest,  the  Immboo  pole  set  up  as  the  sign  of 
the  rain-god  by  Vasu,  in  the  land  called  in  the  Mahabharata 
the  land  of  the  Kichaka  or  hill-bamboo;  (2)  the  Bel,  the  medi- 
cinal fruit-tree  {JElgle  mannelos\  the  tree  of  the  physicians, 
the  fruit  of  which  cures  dysentery ;  (3)  the  Kach-hap,  the 
tortoise ;  and  (4)  the  Mayur,  the  peacock.^  It  is  in  Greek 
legend  that  we  find  the  story  which  tells  us  how  the  peacock 
became  the  totem  of  the  sons  of  the  dog.  For  when  Argus, 
the  star  watch-dog  of  lo,  the  dark  night,  the  star  Sirius,  was 
slain  or  supplanted  in  the  rule  of  the  heavens  by  the  crescent- 
moon,  the  Harpe,  or  crescent-shaped  sword  wielded  by 
Hermes,  the  fire-god  of  the  double-snake  race,  whose  em- 
blems are  twined  round  his  caduceus,  the  watch ing-star, 
Argus  became  the  peacock  whose  tail  is  studded  with  the 
stars  of  heaven.  The  name  of  the  peacock,  Mayura,  also 
takes  us  back  to  that  of  Maia,  the  mother  of  Hermes,  the 
seventh  or  invisible  star  of  the  Pleiades,^  our  own  May, 
and  the  witch-mother  Maga.  It  was  as  sons  of  the  witch - 
mother  that  tlie  stars  became  snakes,  the  Taras  of  the 
Gonds,  theTara  Pennu,  the  snake  or  star-mother,  the  goddess 
of  Maghada,  and  the  Greek  apyrj^;^  Doric  apyaf;^  which  means 
a  snake,  and  the  watching-star ;  and  it  was  when  the  star- 
gods  were  superseded  in  the  rule  of  heaven  that  Apollo,  the 
moon-  and  sun-god  l)ecaine  Argeiphontes  (\py€L<f>6irr7}(;\  the 
slayer  of  the  snake.  These  watch ing-stars,  Argus  with  the 
hundred  eyes,  were  the  Uragas,  or  heavenly- watchers,  of  the 
Hindus,  the  Pali  Urago,  called  Ashura  in  the  Mahabharata,^ 
and  the  Uru-gul,  or  great  watcher  of  heaven,  of  the  Akka- 
dians, the  chief  priest  *  who  gained  the  name  beaiuse  he  was 
the  chief  astronomer  of  the  State.     Thus  we  find  that  the 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  App.  I.  p.  9.     Medical  study 
l)egan  in  the  age  of  the  Ashvins,  the  physicians  to  the  gods. 

-  Aratus,  Phaitiomctia,  201-203. 

^  Drona  {Jagadratha  Parva),  cxliv.  p.  441. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lcct.  i.  p.  80  note  2. 


ESSAY  in  J295 

peacock  reached  Greece  from  India  under  tlie  auspices  of  Salli- 
mannu,  the  fisli-god,  some  thousands  of  years  before  the  date 
of  about  1000  B.C.,  hitherto  assigned  to  his  namesake,  Solo- 
imon,  the  Jewish  king,  and  it  is  this  last  who,  as  we  are  told 
in   the  Book  of  Kings,  imported  to  Palestine  apes,  ivory, 
peacocks,  and  almag,  or  sandal-wood,  under  names  which  all 
scholars  admit  to  be  of  Tamil  origin.    It  is  impossible  to  l)e- 
lieve  that  at  that  date  the  western  coast  of  India  should  have 
T>een  called  Ophir,  which,  as  Dr.  Sayce  has  shown,  is  the 
Dravidian  Abhira,^  or  that  Dravidian  dialects  should  have 
l)een  the  ordinary  language  of  commerce  used  there.     The 
-eighth  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda  had  long  before  that  date  been 
written  in  Sanskrit  by  the  Kanva,  the  priests  of  the  Yadu- 
Turvashu,  the  great  race  of  the  Ikshvaku  its  rulers,  and  the 
ordinary  language  of  the  country  must  have  been  a  Pali  or 
Prakrit  dialect.     That  Solomon,  the  son  of  David,  an  inland 
king,  should  have  joined  with  Hiram  of  Tyre  in  starting  a 
trade  with  India,  which  disappears  immediately  after  his  death, 
seems  to  be  equally  impossible,  but  it  is  quite  in  accordance 
with  the  rules  of  ancient   mythic  history,  as  used   by  the 
Aryan  historians  of  the  narrative  age,  that  the  myths  origin- 
ally framed  to  tell  the  story  of  the  triumphant  progress  of 
Sallimannu,  the  fish-god,  whose  worshippers  built  the  first 
temples,  should  be  transferred  to  his  namesake,  the  king  who 
built  the  great  temple  at  Jerusalem,  and  this  conclusion  is 
confirmed  by  the  prominence  given  to  the  Hindu  apes  and 
peacocks  in  the  religions   of  Egypt   and  Europe.      These 
divine  symbols  would  naturally  have  been  spoken  of  in  the 
original  myth  of  Sallimamiu,  but  could  not  have  attracted 
the  attention  of  the  court  historiographer  in  the  days  of 
Solomon  the  king,  for  by  that  time  neither  apes  nor  peacocks 
liad  any  place  in  the  Hebrew  religion,  nor  was  there  any 
I'eason  for  importing  them.    The  eight  sacred  apes  under  the 
Tamil  name  of  Kapi,  were  the  Egyptian  prototypes  of  the 
later  metaphysical  abstractions  called  the  eight  creating-gods 

*  Sayce,  *  Ophir,'  in  Queen'' s  Printers'  Aids  to  the  Student  of  the  Holy  Bible. 


296  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIxMES 

headed  by  the  Nun.  Tliey  are  called  '  the  soul  of  the  East, 
the  apes  who  adore  Ra,  the  rising  sun,  the  eight  Chnum,**  or 
building  architects,  the  gods  of  the  building  race, '  who  sit 
to  the  right  and  left  of  Amon  the  ram-god,**  the  god  of  the 
house-pole.  Of  these  eight  apes,  the  eight  creating-stars, 
four  were  called  Beiitet  or  Keflenu,  that  is,  the  Phoenician 
{kepht\  or  Northern  apes,  and  four  the  apes  of  Uetenu, 
meaning  the  green  land,  which  is  to  the  east  of  Punt,  and 
must  he  India.^  The  coming  of  these  sacred  apes,  the  god 
whose  image  was  borne  on  the  banner  of  Arjuna,  the  leader 
of  the  Pandavas,  and  the  creed  they  brought  with  them 
must  have  formed  a  most  important  epoch  in  the  history 
recorded  by  the  national  Asipu.  For  it  was  these  Tursena, 
the  army  {sena)  of  Tur,  who,  by  developing  the  ancient 
organisation  of  the  village  and  province  in  India,  divided  all 
the  countries  they  occupied  into  confederacies  of  cities,  such 
as  we  find  among  the  Euphratean  nations,  the  Egyptians, 
Canaanites,  the  people  of  Asia  Minor,  Greece,  and  Italy.  It 
was  they  who  were  the  fathers  of  Greek  and  Latin  civilisation  ; 
who  made  the  maintenance  of  law  and  order,  doing  justice 
between  man  and  man,  and  the  making  of  useful  laws,  the 
chief  function  of  government,  and  based  national  life  on  the 
Dravidian  rule  that  everv  man  and  woman  should  do  his  and 
her  dutv  to  the  State.  These  maritime  Tursena  were  inter- 
mingled  with  the  matriarchal  Amazonian  tribes  who  preceded 
them,  and  who  seem  to  have  founded  the  ancient  ports  of 
Asia  Minor  and  Palestine,  especially  the  Ionian  cities  of 
Smyrna  and  Ephesus,  and  that  of  Askelon,  where  the  god- 
dess-mother was  worshipped  as  Myrina,  the  Aramaic  Martha, 
the  mistress,  the  Assyrian  Martu,  the  daughter,  and  the 
Hebrew  Miriam,  the  prophetess,  who  was,  like  Istar,  the 
mother  of  Tannnuz.^  It  was  they,  as  the  founders  of  sea- 
ports who,  like  their  Indian  maritime  ancestors,  made  ships 
from  the  wood  on  the  hills  of  Asia  Minor,  near  the  sea- 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Relif^oti  und  Mythologie  der  Allen  ^-Egypter,  pp.  1 50- 1 59. 
-  Sayce,  Hibhert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  235  note  4. 


ESSAY  III  297 

coast,  and  founded  tlie  commerce  which  brought  the  cedars 
of  Amarrum  or  Lebanon  to  Lugash,  the  city  of  Gudia.  The 
race  formed  by  the  union  of  these  matriarchal  tribes  with  the 
sons  of  the  pole  was  that  of  Dorians,  the  race  whose  protect- 
iJ^g  god  was  Apollo.  These  people  have  apparently  left  their 
name  in  the  Hebrew  land  of  Dor,  the  country  of  the  magi- 
cians, on  the  coast  south  of  Sidon,  and  they  were  the  sons 
first  of  the  tree-stem  and  spear  (Sopi;),  and  afterwards  of  the 
revolving  pole,  called  by  the  Jews  Dor,  and  also  of  the  Dor, 

*  generation  or  epoch,^  the  descendants  of  the  revolving  ages, 

*  oijrthical  equation  similar  to  that  which  changed  the  Akka- 
^Q-n  god  of  the  dead  Ner-gal,  the  great  {gal)  strong  one 
f^^^r^  into  the  Babylonian  Ner  or  epoch  of  six  hundred  years. 
^^e  names  of  the  Dorian  tribes,  the  Hylleis  or  woodmen  {vXrj)^ 
^■^e  sons  of  the  tree,  the  Pamphyli  or  collected  tribes  {<f>vXal) 
^''^o  left  their  name  in  the  province  of  Pamphylia,  and  the 
"ytnanes  or  sons  of  the  entering-god  (Suco),  that  is,  of  the 
^^Volving  pole  or  fire-drill  of  heaven,  tell  us  a  great  deal 
^^^out  their  history.  They  were  the  people  formed  from  the 
^^ion  of  the  sons  of  the  tree,  the  fire-god  and  the  house-pole, 

^'Vio  brought  from  Asia  Minor  into  Crete  their  system  of 
^Us-sitia,  or  common  meals,  at  which,  as  we  are  told  by  Aris- 
totle, the  whole  village  population,  men,  women,  and  children, 
ate  together  the  food  provided  from  the  common  granaries 
or  store-houses  (ex  Koivoii)^  and  this  custom  was  not  peculiar 
to  the  Cretans  and  Spartans,  but  was  indigenous  among  the 
(Enotrians  of  Southern  Italy,  the  Arkadians  of  Phygalia, 
and  the  Argives.     It  was  observed  at  Megara  in  the  days  of 
Theognis,  and  was  said  to  have  been  introduced  into  Corinth 
by  Periander.^    It  was  in  short  a  general  Dorian  custom,  and 
these  common   meals  and  the  division  into  messes  of  the 
Spartans  and  Cretans,  are  reproduced  in  the  customs  of  the 
unmarried  men  of  the  Naga  races  in    India,  who   all   live 

Gesenius,  Thesaurus ,  p.  331,  s.v.  *Dor.' 
2  MuUer,  Die  Dorter,  bk.  iii.  chap.  x.  p.  199. 
^  Ibid,  bk.  iv.  chap.  iii.  p.  269. 


298  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

together  as  the  Spartan  youths  used  to  do,  while  the  public 
granaries  still  sur\'ive  in  those  distributed  throughout  Chota 
Nagporefor  storing  the  produce  of  the  Manjhus  or  royal 
land.  Among  the  Spartans  and  Cretans  also,  as  among  the 
Naga  races  in  India,  the  children  did  not  belong  to  then- 
parents  but  to  the  State,  and  every  Spartan  father  was 
obliged  to  bring  his  children  when  bom  to  the  Lesche,  to  be 
examined  by  the  elders  of  the  tribe,  who  determined  whether 
they  were  to  live  or  not.i  If  accepted,  they  were  brought  up 
like  the  Indian  Naga  children,  by  the  State  or  village,  and 
the  divisions  of  the  Spartan  youths  into  sections  called  Bouai 
and  Ilai,  ruled  by  one  of  the  elder  lads  called  Iren,*  tells  us 
that  they  were  sons  of  the  ox  Bous,  and  the  mother  Ida  or 
Ila,  who  obeyed  the  chief  divider  or  arbitrator,  Iren,  the  son 
of  Idii  or  Ira,  the  centre  of  the  sacrificial  altar,  and  of  the  three 
primaeval  mothers.  The  descent  of  the  Dorians  and  Spartans 
from  the  races  to  whom  the  village  grove  was  the  goddess- 
mother  of  their  children,  is  shown  in  their  marriage-customs. 
These  obliged  the  husband  to  consummate  his  marriage 
secretly  in  the  grove  called  the  Numpheutria,  to  M'hich  he 
carried  his  wife  by  simulated  capture.  Tliere  the  brides- 
woman  met  them  and  received  the  bride  from  her  husband, 
cut  off  her  hair,  dressed  her  in  man'*s  clothes,  and  left  her  in 
the  dark,^  so  that  the  subsequent  union  was  like  the  Hindu 
marriage  by  Sindurdan,  a  completion  of  blood  brotherhood. 
The  Spartan  form  of  government  by  the  two  kings  of  the 
families  of  the  Agida?,  or  sons  of  the  goat,  and  the  Eurypon- 
tidfie  or  Eurytionidae,*  and  by  the  five  Ephors,  both  repro- 
duce Dravidian  customs,  and  give  historical  evidence  of  the 
origin  of  the  race.  The  five  Ephors  are  the  five  meml)ers  of 
the  Indian  village  council  called  the  Panchayat,  or  council  of 
five  (panch)^  while  the  two  kings  are  the  Dravidian  supreme 

^  Plutarch's  Lycurgtts. 

'  MUller,  Die  Dorier,  bk.  iv.  chap.  v.  §2,  p.  297. 
='  IHiL  bk.  iv.  chap.  iv.  §  2,  p.  278. 

*  Pausanias  and  Strabo  call  the  second  race  of  kings,  Eurytionidac.     Other 
auihorilies  call  them  Eur>'pontid£e. 


ESSAY  III  299 

king,  judge   and  law-giver,  and  his  chief  subordinate  and 
almost  co-equal,  the  Sena-pati,  lord  (pati)  of  the  army  {sena\ 
the  commander-in-chief.   In  the  family  names  of  the  Spartan 
kings  we  find  the  sons  of  the  mountain,  or  rather  of  the 
storm-goat  (a?^),^  the  father-god  of  storms,  the  Branchian 
and  iEolian  Apollo   bom  in  Lydia  and  Phrygia,  and  the 
sons  of  the  wide  (evpv^)  sea  (ttoi/to?),  or  what  is  still  more  sig- 
nificant of  Eur3rtion  or  Eurytus,  the  father  of  the  Centaurs. 
He  was  the  divine  archer,  the  bearer  of  the  mythic  bow 
which  at  last  descended  to  Odusseus,^  the  wandering  sun-god 
whose  wife  was  Penelope,  the  weaver  of  the  web  (tt^i/t;)  of 
time.     The  name  Eur3rtus  represents  a  form  (efe/auTO?),  de- 
rived from  ipvd)^  *  to  draw,**  and  he  is  the  exact  counterpart  of 
the  Hindu  god  of  the  bow,  Krishanu,  whose  name  comes  from 
fcarsh,  *  to  draw,**  and  the  bow  which  he  bears  is  the  rainbow 
of  the  rain-god,  the  Gandiva,  the  bow  of  Arjuna,  the  bright 
One  (diva)  of  the  Gan,  the  rain-god  among  the  Pandavas. 
JCrishanu  is  the  leader  of  the  seven  Gandharvas,  the  guardians 
of  Soma^  that  is,  of  the  seven  days  which  make  the  pole  the 
^^ven  bulls  of  the  Great  Bear  revolve  and  bring  the  season 
the  rains.     But  while  the  Hindus  call  the  seven  rulers  of 
loud-land   Gandharvas,  or   men  of  the  country  (ffan)   of 
^he  pole   {dhruva\   the   Grt^eks  call  them  Ken-tauroi,  the 
prickers,   or    goaders    (/cei/Tcfl))  of  the   bull   (javpo^;)^  and 
'these  names  mark  the  interval  in  the  transmission  of  the 
^Mnyth  which  separated  the  conception  of  the  week-days  as 
^^oaders  of  the  bull,  who  ploughs  the  field  and  brings  the 
Iiarvest  home,  from  that  of  the  guardians  of  cloud-land,  which 
make  the  pole  of  time  revolve.    This  evidence  also  shows  that 
the  myth  of  the  Centaurs,  or  heavenly  horsemen,  with  that 
of  the    dolphin  fish-god,  who  led  the  priests  of  Apollo  to 
Delphi,  was  brought  to  Greece  by  the  Dorians,  who  made 
the  heavenly  twins,  the  Ashvins  of  the  Hindus,  their  sex- 
less father-gods,  Kastor   and  Polydeukes.     They  were  the 
^gg-bom  sons  of  one  mother,  Leda,  by  two  fathers,  Tyn- 

^  From  atffffia,  *  to  rush.'  -  Homer,  Odyssey,  viii.  224  ff. 


aOO  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

dareus,  the  hanimerman,  or  primaeval  sniith,^  and  Zeus,  and 
were  like  the  twin-children  of  Vivasvat  and  Saranyu,  mortal 
and  immortal,  the  mortal  Eastor  being  the  son  of  Tyndareus, 
and  the  immortal  Polydeukes,  the  great  wetter  (Seuo)),  the 
rain-god,  of  Zeus.  Kastor  was  the  pole  of  Ka,  the  star 
called  by  the  Akkadian  astronomers  tlie  star  Tur-us  of  the 
supreme  temple,  the  sacred  pole  of  the  house  of  Grod.-  They 
both  fonued  part  of  the  crew  of  the  star-ship  Argo,  which 
came  from  the  South  into  the  Grecian  seas,  where  it  ceased 
to  be  visible,  but  where  its  memory  was  preserved  in  the 
name  of  the  land  of  Argos,  whose  people  took  for  their 
cognisance  the  fish.^  The  name  of  their  mother,  Leda,  tells 
us  of  the  route  by  which  the  sons  of  the  twin-stars  came  from 
India  to  Asia  Minor,  and  thence  by  way  of  Crete  to  Greece. 
Leda  is  the  feminine  form  of  lAJdon  (\tjBov\  the  Mastich 
shrub  (Pistaccia  lentiscus\  yielding  the  incense  Ledanon 
burnt  in  the  Greek  temples.  The  root  Ledon  appears  in 
Hebrew  as  ht^  incense,  whence  comes  the  name  of  the 
patriarch  Lot,  meaning  concealment,  and  a  veil.*  He  was 
by  his  two  daugliters,  the  twin-wives  of  the  primaeval  father- 
god,  the  father  of  Moab,  meaning  the  water-father,  the 
Greek  Polydeukes,  and  Amon,  the  supporter,  the  house 
pole,^  the  Greek  Kastor;  and  he  was  like  the  Indian  fish- 
god  Matsya,  whose  name  is  derived  from  the  root  meuU 
meaning  intoxicating,  inspired  by  drunkenness.  The  incense^ 
whence  they  were  l)om,  was  that  which  hid  the  god  dwelling 
in  the  holy  of  holies,  the  Naos,  or  innermost  recesses  of  the 
temple,  built  by  the  sons  of  the  fish  ;  and  tliis  conception  of 
the  symbolism  of  burning  incense,  hiding  the  father  of  life, 
as  the  Rishi  Para-shara,  the  overhanging  cloud,  was  hidden 

*  Fr.    root    itid^    to    strike ;    Curtius,    Griechische  Etymologic^  No.    248, 
pp.  226,  227. 

'•*  R.   Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  'Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,' star  x.  line  13. 
Proceedings  of  Society  of  Biblical  Archeology,  Feb.  1890. 
'  *  Greek  Totems,'  Quarterly  Review^  Jan.  189 1,  p.  199. 

*  Gesenius,  Thesaurus ^  s.v.  *Lot,*  p.  748. 

'  Ibid,  s.v.  *  Moab,*  p.  77$  ;  *  Ammon,'  p.  115. 


ESSAY  III  ^1 

when  he  begot  Vyasa,  the  son  of  SatyavatI,  she  who  is 
possessed  of  truth  (satya)^  is  one  that  arose  in  India.  There, 
in  the  central  land  of  Gondwana,  reaching  from  the  realm 
of  king  Vasu,  on  the  Sakti  mountains,  where  the  fish-god  was 
bom,  to  the  Malabar  coast,  the  Salai-tree  {BosweUia  thuri- 
Jerd)^  the  original  incense- tree,  crowns  every  rocky  height, 
where  nothing  else  will  grow,  and  is  quite  as  ubiquitous  as 
the  hill  bamboo,  the  Kichaka,  which  Vasu  planted  as  the 
rain-pole.  It  was  in  this  land  of  the  Kichaka  that  the 
Pandavas,  by  the  advice  of  the  Gandharva  king,  Chitra- 
ratha,  the  star-god  of  the  many-coloured  (chitra)  chariot 
{r(Uha)\  made  Dhaumya,  the  son  of  smoke  {dhtmio\  their 
family  priest,  and  it  was  under  his  guidance  that  they 
gained  their  common  bride,  Drupadi,  in  the  adjoining  land 
of  the  Srinjayas,  or  Pafichalas.  She  and  her  brother, 
Dhrishtha-dyumna,  were  ostensibly  the  children  of  king 
Drupada,  the  sacrificial  stake,  but  were  really  bom  from 
the  sacrificial  flame,  lighted  on  the  altar  of  bumt-oftering 
by  the  Brahmin  Yaja,  meaning  the  sacrifice,  and  while 
Drupadi  was  the  incense  altar,  the  mother  of  the  children 
of  the  Pandavas,  the  five  seasons  of  the  year,  hidden  in  the 
inner  Naos,  or  female  apartments  of  the  temple,  Dhrishtha- 
dyumna,  whose  name  means  *  the  seen  bright  one,**  was  the 
altar  of  bumt-ofFering  in  the  outer  court ;  and  both  symbol- 
ised the  ritual  of  the  Afigiras  priesthood,  the  offerers  of 
burnt-offerings,  the  Bharadvajas  and  Gotamas.  The  custom 
of  burning  incense  as  the  veil  of  the  unseen  god,  which 
began  and  still  survives  in  India,  went  thence,  through  the 
Euphratean  ports,  to  Arabia,  where  a  fresh  source  of  incense 
was  found  in  the  Arabian  incense-tree  {BosweUia  carterti\ 
and  it  passed  thence  through  Egypt,  Palestine,  and  Asia 
Minor,  to  Greece.  But  the  incense-mother,  Leda,  who  came 
from  the  land  where  Gandhari  and  Urvashi  laid  the  eggs, 
whence  the  Kushite  race  and  Ayu,  the  son  of  ages,  were 
bom,  was  not  the  goose-mother  of  the  sons  of  Kush,  but 

'  Joseph's  coat  of  many  colours* 


302  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIME- 

the  KVKvo^^  or  Cygnus,  a  swan.  Tliis  name  is  the  same  a. 
that  of  ^hakuna,  the  brother  of  Gandhari,  who  was  first  th« 
Ciconia,  or  stork,  who  told  of  the  end  of  the  Northern  winter 
but  who  became  in  India  the  bird  of  the  torrid  summer  sea- 
son. But  this  bird  of  spring  was  superseded,  in  the  age  ol 
astral  theology  I  am  now  discussing,  by  the  Southern  goose 
and  Northern  swan,  the  moon-birds.  It  is  the  swan  which 
is  the  moon-boat  which  bears  Lohengrin,  the  swan-knight, 
who  keeps  in  his  bosom  the  holy  grail,  or  secret  casket 
containing  the  life-giving  water,  the  blood  of  the  gods,  the 
heavenly  Soma.  It  was  this  casket,  containing  the  cups 
called  Consecration  {diksha)  and  Penance  (tapas),  which  was 

given  to  the  goddess-mother  Ka-dru,  the  tree  ol 
Ka,  by  the  bird  Shyena,  who  took  it  from  the 
guardianship  of  Krishanu,  the  god  of  the 
heavenly  bow.^  It  is  this  boat  of  the  moon- 
bird  with  its  central  mast,  the  supporting-pole, 
which  is  the  Delphic  Trisula,  the  Greek  €  in- 
scribed over  the  gate  of  the  temple. 

The  age  on  which  the  world  now  entered  was  that  of 
Semite  rule,  achieved  by  the  confederacy  of  the  sons  of  Sin, 
led  by  the  tribes  of  Ephraini,  tlie  two  Ashes  (cper)^  or  the 
united  twin-races  of  the  Arabian  sons  of  the  iiss,  and  the 
composite  race  of  the  builders,  artisans,  traders,  and  warriors, 
tlie  sons  of  the  fire-god.  They,  led  by  Josluia,  the  son  of 
the  Nun,  which  means  in  Hebrew  '  the  fish,"  and  allied  with 
the  sons  of  Caleb,  '  tlie  dog,**  took  Jericho,  the  moon-city  of 
the  goddess  Ashtoretli,  or  Esther,  by  the  help  of  Rahab,  the 
alligator,  and  Marduk,  the  bull,  and  superseded  the  rule  of 
the  Akkadian-Turanian  Finns  by  that  of  the  Semites,  making 
the  Semites  the  successors  of  the  Kushites  in  the  rule  of 
Southern  Asia  and  Egypt,  a  conquest  which  enables  us  to 
explain  how  the  rule  of  the  later  Sargon  extended  as  far 
west  as  Cyprus,  and  how,  as  we  leani  from  the  tablets  of 

'  Eggeling,  Sa/.   Brah,  iii.  6,  2,  8-1 1  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.    150,   151  ; 
Rigvcda,  iv.  27,  3. 


ESSAY  III  803 

Tell-El  Amarna,  in  the  days  of  the  eighteenth  Egyptian 
dynasty,  or  1800  b.c,  the  Assyrian  cuneiform  script  was  the 
written  character* used  in  Palestine.     And  just  as  this  con- 
quest is  commemorated  in  Zend  and  Hindu  mythic  history 
by  the  name  of  the  conquering  king,  Hu-srava  and  Shu- 
shravas,  the  offspring  or  glory  of  the  Hus  or  Shus,  so  is  the 
same  reminiscence  repeated  in  the  original  name  of  Joshua, 
the  son  of  Nun,  who  was  first  called  Hoshea  or  Hush-ia,^  that 
is,  the  Yah,  or  supreme  god  of  the  Hus.     They  extended 
the  eleven  months  of  generation,  the  parent  gods  of  the  sons 
of  the  ass,  to  the  full  thirteen  lunar  months,  or  364  days,  of 
tie  lunar  year,  and  these  months  are  the  thirteen  children 
of  Jacob  and   the  thirteen  wives  of  Kashyapa,  called  (1) 
Aditi,  (2)  Deti,  (3)  Danu,  (4)  Kala,  (5)  Danayu,  (6)  Sinhika, 
C7)  Krodha,  (8)  Pradha,  (9)  Visva,  (10)  Vinata,  (11)  Kapila, 
CIS)  Muni,  or  Daksha,  (13)  Kadru.     They  are  the  thirteen 
^Xionths  to  which  libations  are  made  in  the  Soma  sacrifice, 
«^jid   are   there  arranged  in  pairs,  in  accordance  with  the 
-Ashura  belief  in  their  sanctity.     This  year,  which  begins 
"Vrith  the  winter  solstice,  and  the  two  spring  months,  Madhu 
^md  Madhava,  is  dedicated  to  the  Ashvins,  the  drinkers  of 
intoxicating   honey   mead.^      Valuable   evidence   as   to   the 
lunar  theology  of  the  pre-solar  Hindu  race  is  given  by  the 
secret  gods  of  the  Santals,  called  the  seven  Orak-bongas,  or 
household    gods,  and  the  thirteen   Abge-bongas,  or  secret 
gods.     Converts  have  told  their  names  to  missionaries,  but 
no  Santal  who  retains  the  faith  of  his  fathers  will  tell  to 
any  one,  except   his   eldest  son,  the  secret   names  of  the 
seven  days  of  the  week  and   the  thirteen    months  of  the 
year,  and   these   are   most   carefully   concealed   from   their 

^  Numbers  xiii.  17.  Gesenius  translates  the  name  Hoshea  as  *  freed  by 
Jehovah,*  but  the  compilers  of  the  Pentateuch  had  forgotten  the  methods  of 
mythic  history  and  the  meaning  of  Hushim,  and  the  interpretation  I  suggest 
is  one  confirmed  by  Zend  and  Hindu  mythology,  and  is  also  consonant  with 
historical  facts.  Joshua  was  the  son  or  successor  of  Nun,  and  the  la  or  Ya  of 
the  race  of  the  circumcision. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  iv.  3,  i,  14-20;  S.B.E,  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  320-322. 


304  THE  BULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTOBIC  TI]W 

wives  or  female  relations.  Once  a  year  sacrifices  are  oSk 
to  them  without  the  intervention  of  a  priest,  and  while 
whole  family  may  share  in  the  food  offered  to  the  Oi 
bongas,  only  men  may  eat  of  that  of  the  Abge-bonj 
The  Santals  do  not,  like  the  Mundas  and  Ooraons,  k 
their  aimual  Saturnalia  in  Miigh,  the  witches'  month, 
in  Pous,  at  the  winter  solstice,  when  the  lunar  year  beg 
the  time  of  the  Pongol  Festival  of  the  Madras  Dravidii 
But  though  this  lunar  year  is  their  religious  year,  their  ofB* 
year,  like  that  of  the  Mund&s  and  Ooraons,  begins  in  Ma 
Tlie  change  in  customs  thus  marked  by  the  adoption 
the  lunar  year  must  be  attributed  to  the  addition  to  tl 
confederacy  of  the  star-worshipping  race,  who  formed 
sub-tribe,  tracing  their  descent  to  the  Sar-ens,  or  Pleiat 
the  stars  of  the  goddess-mother  Sar,  and  the  mother-si 
of  the  Dravidian  races.  The  peculiar  customs  of  the  Sar- 
seem  to  mark  them  as  a  separate  community,  somewi 
similar  to  the  tribe  of  Levi  among  the  Jews.  One  of  th 
sub-septs,  the  Naiki-Khil-Saren,  have  a  separate  grove  c 
priest  of  their  own,  and  may  not  enter  a  house  in  which  i 
of  the  inmates  are  ceremonially  unclean,  while  the  Si 
Saren  do  not  use  vermilion  to  make  the  Sindur-dan  mi 
at  their  marriages,  and  neither  they  nor  the  Manjhi-Kl 
Saren  may  be  present  at  a  sacrifice  when  the  priest  ofl 
his  own  blood.^  Their  thirteen  lunar  months  are  called 
Dhara-sor,  or  Dhara-sanda,  the  moon  (sanda)  of  the  sprii 
(dhara)^  the  goddess  Dharti  of  the  Mundas  and  Ooraons, 
Ket-kom  Kudra,  (3)  Champa-dena-garh,  (4)  Garhsinka, 
Lila  Chandi,  the  moon  {chandi)  of  sorcery  {lila\  (6)  Di 
ghara,  (7)  Kudra  Chandi,  (8)  Bahara,  (9)  Duar-seri,  (] 
Kud-raj,  (11)  Gosain  Era,  (12)  Achali,  (13)  Deswali.2  1 
ruling  goddess  of  these  thirteen  months  is  the  moon-godd 
of  the  seventh  month,  Kudra-Chandi,  called  Jyesthha,  1 
oldest,  in  the  official  list  of  Hindu  months.  She  holds  1 
place  assigned  to  the  moon-mother  in  the  cosmological  hyi 

^  Risley,  Tribes  anii  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  ii.  p.  228.  ^  Ibid  p.  23 


ESSAY  III  305 

of  the  Rigveda,  where  she  is  the  seventh  self-created  goddess, 
placed  in  the  centre  of  the  year  of  thirteen  months,  who  has 
six  twin  singers  (rishi%  bom  from  the  gods,  the  six  preced- 
ing and  six  following  months,  on  each  side  of  her.^     She  is 
the  goddess  Kudra-sini  of  the  fiauris,  to  whom  pigs,  fowls, 
rice,  sugar,  and  ghee  are  offered  in  the  Akhra,  or  village 
dancing-place,  on  Saturdays  and  Sundays  by  the  tribal  priest, 
who  must  fast  from  fish  or  flesh  the  day  before  he  makes  the 
offering.^     Kudra  is  also  one  of  the  seven  spirits  worshipped 
by  the  Bhuiyas,  called  (1)  Darha,  (2)  Kudra,  (8)  Kudri,  (4) 
T)ano,  (5)  Pacheria,  (6)  Haserwar,  (7)  Pakahi.'     In  this  name 
Xudra,  for  the  moon,  we  find  the  Finnish  word  for  moon, 
ifrhich  appears  in  the  Finnic  kuta-ma^  the  Esthonian  Arw,  the 
JVf ordvin  kua^  the  Ostiak  Khoda-j^  and  also  in  Kuh%  a  name 
for  the  waning  moon,  in  the  Atharvaveda,^  and  in  Ku-aVy 
the  name  given  to  the  month  Asva-yuja  in  Western  India. 
We  find  the  Finnic  moon-goddess  Kudra  united  with  Sin 
or  Sini,  the  moon-god  of  the  Semitic  Shus,  in  the  name  of 
the  Bauri  goddess  Kudra-Sini,  and  in  the  Rigveda  Sini-valT, 
or  the  strong  Sini,  called  also  Gufigu,  or  mother  of  the  Gan, 
is  the  goddess  of  the  waxing  moon,  who  rules  the  house ;  and 
she  forms,  with  Sarasvati  or  Rahu,  the  waning  moon,  the  twin- 
pair,  who  together  give  children  to  its  owners  in  the  tenth 
lunar  month.*       This  tenth  month  is,  in  the  Santal  year, 
ruled  by  Kud-raj,  the  king  of  the  Ku,  or  lunar  series,  and 
it  is  as  the  tenth  month  of  the  year  that  Asva-yuja  gets 
the  name  of  Ku-ar.     The  M ahabharata  tells  us  how  moon- 
worship  and   the  reckoning  of  lunar  time  was   made   the 
official  religion  at  Champa,  the  modem  Bhagalpore,  or  rather 
Patharghata,^  the  Champa-dena-garh  of  the  Santal   lunar 

^  Rigveda,  i.  164,  15. 

"  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  pp.  80,  81. 

*  Ibid.  p.  115. 

*  Lenormant,  Chaldcean  Magic,  p.  304. 

*  Atharvaveda,  v.  viii.  47 ;  Ludwig,  Rigveda,  vol.  iii.  p.  189. 

*  Rigveda,  ii.  32,  5,  6,  7 ;  x.  184,  2,  3. 

'  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India^  p.  477. 

20 


306  THE  RULIxNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

months.  This  land  of  extinct  volcanoes  and  hot  springs 
was  the  ancient  Afiga,  or  land  of  burning  coals  (afiga).  It 
was  there  that  Karna,  king  of  Afiga,  bom  on  the  Asva,  or 
horse-river,  was  found  by  Radha,  the  arc,  or  semicircle,  wife 
of  Adiratha,  the  chief  charioteer  of  the  king  of  the  Eushikas. 
The  name  Earna,  the  son  of  Ashva,  the  horse,  exactly  repro- 
duces that  of  the  Zend  hero,  K^resaspa,  the  son  of  Sama,  the 
Semite  who,  in  the  land  of  Vaekerata,  or  evil  shadows,  the 
modem  Kabul,  the  original  home  of  the  Kushite  race,  tamed 
and  wedded  the  moon,  the  Pairika  Knathaiti,  or  wandering 
star  (Pairika)  adored  (knath)  by  men.^  The  Semite  origin 
of  Keresaspa,  the  homed  (keres)  horse  {aspa\  who  as  the 
unicorn,  or  homed  fish,  became  the  heavenly  charioteer,  is 
presented  in  the  name  Karna,  which  contains  the  root  of 
the  Hebrew  keren^  a  horn;  and  this  Northern  name  of 
the  horned-moon  is  exactly  analogous  to  that  of  Sinh, 
or  Singh,  the  homed -one,  given  it  by  the  Southern 
Sumerians — the  difference  being  in  the  race  totems.  The 
Sumerians  being  the  sons  of  the  wild  bull,  or  cow,  and  the 
Northern  moon-worshippers  being  the  sons  of  the  horse,  the 
Parthian  cavalry,  the  Hindu  Kuntibhojas.  Karna,  the 
horned-moon  of  the  Mahabharata,  is  the  miraculously  bom 
son  of  Prithu,  the  mother  of  the  Parthian  race,  before  she 
became  the  mother  of  the  Pandavas.  She  was  the  daughter 
of  the  king  of  the  Kuntibhojas  or  Bhojas  of  the  spear  {kinUi) 
the  Hindu  cavalry  answering  to  the  Greek  infantry,  the 
Dorian  sons  of  the  spear  {iopv).  To  conceal  his  birth  she 
placed  Karna  in  a  basket  in  the  river  Ashva,  whence  he 
floated  down  the  Jumna  and  Ganges  to  Champa,  whence 
he  went  to  Dhritarashtra'^s  court.  He  grew  up  to  be  the  com- 
panion and  chief  ally  of  the  Kauravyas,  and  conquered  for 
them  the  wliole  of  India,  while  the  Pandavas,  after  losing 
their  wealth  and  kingdom  to  Shakuna  the  gambler,  lay  hid 

*  Darmesteter,  2^ndav€sta  Vendtddd  Fargardy  i.  lo,  and  Introduction, 
Fanhirdin  Yasty  136;  Mill's  Yasnay  ix.  10 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  iv.  p.  7  note  4, 
and  p.  2  ;  vol.  xxiii.  p.  223  ;  xxxi.  p.  233. 


ESSAY  III  307 

at  Virata.  Indra  beguiled  him  of  the  panoply  in  which  he 
was  bom,  the  golden  mail  and  earrings  of  the  homed-moon, 
and  gave  him  in  exchange  a  dart  which  could  not  be  baffled, 
the  spear  or  thrown  javelin,  the  national  weapon  of  the 
Parthian  cavalry,  who  overpowered  their  foes  with  showers 
of  darts  or  arrows.^  They  were  the  old  Turkish  or  Ural- 
Altaic  horsemen,  who  have  always  from  time  immemorial  used 
a  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months  of  twenty-eight  days  each.^ 
And  the  whole  story  of  Karna  and  Eeresaspa  tells  how  these 
Northern  moon-worshippers  conquered  India  at  the  close  of 
the  rule  of  the  Naga  kings.  When  we  recollect  further  that 
it  was  the  ancient  Minyans  of  Asia  Minor  who  first  called 
the  moon  Men,  or  the  measurer,  we  see  that  it  was  the 
ancient  Hittites,  to  whom  the  first  wives  of  Esau,  the  goat- 
god,  and  Bathsheba,  she  of  the  seven  (sheba)  measures  {bath)^ 
the  mother  of  Solomon,  the  fish-god,  belonged,  who  first 
calculated  the  lunar  year.  They  were  the  Hitaspa,  or  riding 
Hittites,  whose  leader  was,  like  Karna,  golden-crowned,  who 
killed  Urvakhshaya,  or  Danu  the  Turanian  father  of  the 
Danava,  and  was  afterwards  killed  by  Eeresaspa  the  Semite.* 
Their  language,  as  Major  Conder  has  shown,  is  allied  with 
Mongolian  and  Turkish,  and  it  was  their  people  united  with 
the  Arab  riders  of  the  desert,  from  whom'  Esau  got  his 
third  wife,^  who  entered  India  as  the  Pandus,  or  fair  con- 
querors from  the  North,  and  overran  the  country,  as  the 
White  Huns  and  early  Mohammedans  did  at  a  later  period. 
They  were  the  second  twin  race,  the  Ya-devas,  or  people 
whose  god  {deva)  is  Yah,  and  who  were  the  successors  of  the 
Tur-vashu,  the  sons  of  the  ass,  the  satyrs  of  Phrygia,  who 
have,  like  their  king  Midas,  asses'*  ears.    They  are  apparently 

^  Mahabharata  Adi  {Saffibhava)  Parva,  cxi.  pp,  330, 331  ;  Vana  {Kandala- 
harana)  Parva,  ccxcix. -cccix, 

^  Sayce,  Introduction  to  the  Science  0/  LatiguageSy  vol.  ii.  pp.  195,  196. 

^  Gen.  xxvi.  34,  35 ;  2  Sam.  xi.  2  ff, ' 

*  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Ram  Ya^t^  28  ;  Zamydd  Yast^  41  ;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxiil  pp.  255,  296.  *  Gen.  xxviii.  9,  xxxvi.  3. 


308  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIME* 


the  Shambara  of  the  Rig\'eda  who  carried  on  a  long 
chequered  warfare  with  Divodasa,  son  of  Vadhriashva,  wl 
frequently  defeated  them  before  he  was  finally  conquered 
their  great  king  Su-shravas.  Their  name  is  derived 
the  casting  weapon  {shamba\  the  dart  or  javelin  of  tl  "'  ^^ 
Parthians,  which  Indra  is  prayed  to  use  to  keep  his  foes  at  * 
distance,^  and  it  is  this  same  people  who  are  described  \0f^ 
Curtius  and  Diodorus  as  the  Sambraca?  and  Sambastse,  wh-  ^^ 
ruled  the  country  where  the  five  Panjab  rivers  join  the  Indiu^i-*  ^ 
ITiis  was,  as  Sir  A.  Cunningham  shows,  that  of  the  Johiy^  ^ 
or  Ya  udhya  Rajputs,  called  Johiya-bar  or  Yaudheya-vai 
They  are  named  in  the  Allahabad  inscription  of  Samudi 
Gupta,  and  the  still  earlier  one  of  Junagurh,  and  are  said  ii 
the  narratives  of  Alexander  the  Great'^s  campaigns  to 
had  an  army  of  60,000  foot,  6000  horse,  and  500  chariots. 
They  are  divided  into  three  clans,  of  which  the  names 
very  significant.  Tlie  Langa-vira,  or  worshippers  of  th< 
Linga  or  Vim  ;  the  iVFadho-vira  or  Madhera,  the  drinkers  oi 
the  inspiring  and  intoxicating  {madh)  honey  drink  ;  and  th^ 
Adam-vira  or  Admera,  the  soiis  of  Adam,  the  red  nian.*^ 
Tlicse  names  show  them  to  Ik?,  like  other  ancient  conquering" 
races,  a  most  composite  tribe  formed  of  invading  races,  who^ 
after  the  long  stniggles  related  in  the  legends  of  the  Rigveda* 
and  MahSbhiirata,  united  with  their  neighbours,  who  were 
like  themselves  of  Northern  descent,  and  formed  the  formid- 
able confederacv  of  the  Yadu-Tarvashu.  They  became  the 
Ikshvaku,  or  sons  of  the  sugar-cane,  the  flower  of  whose 
forces  were  the  Kuntibhoja  cavalry,  whose  horses  are  faineil 
throughout  Indian  legend  as  the  swiftest  and  most  enduring 
of  steeds.  They  instituted  the  Soma  sacrifice  especially 
offered  to  the  moon,  for  it  was  their  totemistic  cognisance^ 
the  two  vidhritis  of  sugar-cane,  which  were  laid  between  the 
Kusha-grass  thatching  the  fire-altar  and  the  praMara  of 
Ashva-vala  or  horse-tail  grass,  as  the  begetting  fathers  of  the 

^  Grassmann,    Worterhitch   Ziim  Rigz'eJa,   s.v.,    *Shambara;'    Rigveda, 
X.  42.  -  Cunningham,  A9tcietit  Geography  of  India,  pp.  244,  246. 


ESSAY  III  309 

race  succeeding  the  Kushites.^     They  made  Shiba  or  Shiva, 

the  shepherd-god,  ruler  of  the  year,  calling  him  the  god  of 

number  (Sankha  or  Sankhara),  that  is,  of  the  sacred  number 

seven,  which  furnished  the  two  bricks  Mas-mas^  or  fourteen 

days,  with  which  the  Akkadian  year  builders  built  the  second 

month  of  their  year,  ending  with  the  altar  of  the  creator, 

and  it  was  they  who  consecrated  the  seventh  day,  observed 

as  an  especially  holy  day  by  the  Semite  Assyrians,  Zends, 

and  Jews.    In  the  Soma  festival  of  the  Ashvins  the  trydshira^ 

or  three  mixtures  milk,  curds,  and  barley,  but  no  living 

victims,  were  offered  to  the  rain-gods  Mitra,  Varuna,  Sukra, 

and  the  Maruts,*  and  mead  was  drunk  in  their  honour ;  but 

this  ritual  was  entirely  changed  by  these  Northern  horsemen. 

They  were  like  the  Arabs  of  the  Mohammedan  conquests,  a 

sternly  religious  people,  believing  firmly  in  the  unity  of  God, 

the   great   and   invisible  Yah,   who   infuses  the  life-giving 

germ,  the  Su  or  Soma,  throughout  all  nature  by  the  medium 

of  the  penetrating  moist  and  rain-giving  air,  and  makes  the 

nioon  the  ruler  of  the  processes  by  which  the  root  brings 

forth  the  seed  which,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  gives  birth  to 

Xiew  life.     Like  the  later  Arabs,  they  abhorred  intoxicating 

drinks,  and  looked  on  indulgence  in  the  country  Madhu, 

isiacle  from  the  flowers  of  the  Mahua  tree  {Bassia  latifolia\ 

the  country  rice-beer  or  other  similar  drink,  as  a  disgraceful 

<;rinie,  and  made  all  the  upper  classes  in  India  water-drinkers, 

«s  they  have  ever  since  remained.     They  changed  the  name 

of  the  god  Krishna  from  Madhava,  the  name  most  frequently 

\is€k1  in  the  Maliabharata,  to  Madhu-han,  or  slayer  of  Madhu, 

«nd  framed  the  legend  telling  how  he  consented  to  die  for  the 

good  of  mankind.*    Their  Soma  festival  was  a  water-festival, 

in  which  the  use  of  blood  as  a  cleansing  and  purifying  agent 

was  abolished,  and  they  allowed  none  to  celebrate  it  except 

those  who  had  consecrated  themselves  by  the  Dikshayana  or 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  iii.  4,  i,  18  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  89  note  4,  90. 

-  Eggeling, 5a/.  BrdhM,  i,  4,  10;  iv.  2,  i,  12;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  271,281. 

'  Mahabharata  Vana  {Markandya  Saniaseya)  Parva,  cciii.  pp.  623,  624. 


310  THE  RULIxNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

bath  of  new-birth,